The friends of Voltaire;

THE

FRIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

cIOS

I OIL I /.( '(if . h \'^lT(itrc7',

.fi-Puja^ JJvur^u.'i^-.a.'7'7

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JEAN-LEROND D'ALEMBERT.

From ami Engraxiing after Pnios.

THE

FKIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

BY

S. G. TALLENTYRE '

AUTHOR OF
LIFE OF VOLTAIBE ' ' THB WOMEN OF THE SALONS ' ETC.

i- Hi^uu

* II faut que les §,mes pensantes se frottent Tune centre I'autre
pour faire jaillir de la lumi^re.'

VoLTAiEE : Letter to the Due d' XJzes^ December 4, 1751.

WITH POETEAITS

Y; OF THE '^\

I^NIVERSITY ^

^/!

OF

\,wo9:\^

LONDON

SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE

1906

[All rights r«i«rT*d]

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BEESE

np7ios

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CONTENTS

PAGE

I. D'Alembert : the Thinker (1717-1783) . . . 1

II. Diderot : the Talker (1713-1784) . . ' . .32

III. GalianT: the Wit (1728-1787) 62

IV. Vauvbnargues : the Aphorist (1715-1747) . . 96
V. D'Holbach: the Host (1723-1789) . . . . 118

VI. Grimm: the Journalist (1723-1807) . . . 160

VII. Helvetius : the Contradiction (1715-1771) . . 176

VIII. Turgot: the Statesman (1727-1781) ... 206

IX. Beaumarchais : the Playwright (1732-1799) . . 236

X. CONDORCET : THE ARISTOCRAT (1743-1794) . . . 268

Index 299

294995

POETEAITS

D'Alembert Frontispiece

From an Engraving after Pvjos.

Diderot To face ^.32

From an Engraving by Henriquez, after the Portrait by
Vanloo.

Galiani „ 62

From a Print.

Vauvenargues „ 96

From a Print in the Bibliotheque Rationale, Paris.

D'HOLBACH ,,118

From a Portrait in the Musde Cond4, Chantilly.

Grimm „ 150

From an Engraving, after Carmontelle, in the Bibliothhque
Rationale, Paris.

HELvinus ,,176

From an Engraving by St. Aubin, after the Portrait by
Vanloo.

TURGOT ,,206

From an Engraving by Tje Beau, after the Portrait by
Troy.

Beaumarghais „ 236

From an Engraving, after Michon, in the Bibliotltique
Nationale^ Paris.

CONDORCBT . . „ 268

From an Engraving by Lemvrt, after the Bust by St.
Aubin.

SOME SOUECES OP INFOEMATION

D'Alembert. Joseph Bertrand.

(Buvres et Correspondance inedites. B'Alembert,

Correspondance avec d'Alembert. Marquise du Deffand.

Diderot and the Encyclopaedists. John Morley.

Eloge de d'Alembert. Condorcet.

(Euvres. Diderot.

Diderot. Beimach.

Diderot, THomme et rEcrivain. Ducros.

Diderot. Scherer.

Diderot et Catherine II. Toumewx.

Ferdinand© Galiani, Correspondance, Etude, etc. Perrey et

Maugras.
Lettres de I'Abbe Galiani. Eugene Asse.
Memoires et Correspondance. Madame d'Epvnay.
Jeunesse de Madame d'Epinay. Perrey et Maugras.
Dernieres Annees de Madame d'Epinay. Perrey et Maugras.
Memoires. Marmontel.
Memoires. Morellet.
Causeries du Lundi. Savnte-Beuve.
Vauvenargues. Paleologue.
(Euvres et ^loge de Vauvenargues. D. L. Gilbert.
Melchior Grimm. Scherer,
Eousseau. John Morley.
Miscellanies. John Morley.
Correspondance Litt^raire. Grimm et Diderot.
Turgot. L4on Say.
Turgot. W. B. Hodgson.
(Euvres. Turgot.
Vie de Turgot. Condorcet.

Correspondance inedite de Condorcet et Turgot. C. Henry.
La Marquise de Condorcet. Guillois.
Vie de Condorcet. Bobinet.

X THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

Beaumarchais et Son Temps. Lominie.

Beaumarchais. Hallays.

Th^&tre de Beaumarchais.

La Fin de TAncien E^gime. Imbert de Smnt-Ama/nd.

French Eevolution. Ca/rlyle.

Critical Essays. Garlyle.

Correspondance. VoUwire.

•Portraits Litt^raires du XVIII'^ Sieele. La Ha/rpe.

Corn's de Litterature. La Harpe.

M^moire sm* Helvetius. Darmron.

Le Salon de Madame Helvetius. Guillois.

Histoire de la Philosophic Moderne. Buhle.

Life of Hume. Burton.

The Private Correspondence of Garrick with Celebrated Persons.

Memoires pour servir 4 I'Histoire de la Philosophic. Damiron.

Letters. Laurence Sterne.

THE FRIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

I

UALEMBERT: THE THINKER

Of that vast intellectual movement which prepared
the way for the most stupendous event in history,
the French Kevolution, Voltaire was the creative
spirit.

Q But there was a group of men, less famous but
not less great, who also heralded the coming of
the new heaven and the new earth ; who were in
a strict sense friends and fellow-workers of Voltaire,
although one or two of them were personally little
known to him ; whose aim was his aim, to destroy
from among the people ' ignorance, the curse of
God,' and who were, as he was, the prophets and
the makers of a new dispensation

That many of these light bringers were them-
selves full of darkness, is true enough ; but they
brought the light not the less, and in their own

B

2 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

breasts burnt one cleansing flame, the passion for
humanity.

For the rest, they were the typical men of the
most enthralling age in history — each with his
human story as well as his public purpose, and his
part to play on the glittering stage of the social
life of old France, as well as in the great events
which moulded her destiny and affected the fate of
Europe.

Foremost among them was d'Alembert.

Often talked about but little known, or vaguely
remembered only as the patient lover of Made-
moiselle de Lespinasse, Jean Lerond d'Alembert,
the successor of Newton, the author of the Preface
of the Encyclopaedia, deserves an enduring fame.

On a November evening in the year 1717, one
hundred and eighty-nine years ago, a gendarme^
going his round in Paris, discovered on the steps
of the church of Saint-Jean Lerond, once the
baptistery of Notre-Dame, a child of a few hours
old. The story runs that the baby was richly clad,
and had on his small person marks which would
lead to his identification. But the fact remains
that he was abandoned in mid-winter, left without
food or shelter to take his feeble chance of life and
of the cold charity of some such institution as the
Enfants Trouv^s. It was no thanks to the mother

D'ALEMBEET: THE THINKER 3

who bore him that the gendarme who found him
had compassion on his helpless infancy. The
man had the baby hurriedly christened after his
first cradle, Jean Baptiste Lerond, took him to a
working woman whom he could trust, and who
nursed him — ^for six weeks say some authorities,
for a few days say others — in the little village of
Cremery near Montdidier.

At the end of the time there returned to Paris
a certain gallant General Destouches, who had
been abroad in the execution of his military
duties. He went to visit Madame de Tencin, and
from her learnt of the birth and the abandonment
of their son.

No study of the eighteenth century can be
complete without mention of the extraordinary
women who were born with that marvellous age,
and fortunately died with it. Cold, calculating,
and corrupt, with the devilish cleverness of a
Machiavelli, with the natural instinct of love used
for gain and for trickery, and with the natural
instinct of maternity wholly absent, d'Alembert's
mother was the most perfect type of this monstrous
class. Small, keen, alert, with a little sharp face
like a bird's, brilliantly eloquent, bold, subtle,
tireless, a great minister of intrigue, and insatiably
ambitious — such was Madame de Tencin. It was
she who assisted at the meetings of statesmen, and

B 2

4 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

gave Marshal Eichelieu a plan and a line of con-
duct. It was she who managed the afiairs of her
brother Cardinal de Tencin, and, through him,
tried to effect peace between France and Frederick
in the midst of the Seven Years' War. It was she
who fought the hideous incompetence of Maurepas,
the Naval Minister ; and it was she who summed
herself up to FonteneUe when she laid her hand
on her heart, saying, ' Here is nothing but brain.'

From the moment of his birth she had only
one wish with regard to her child — to be rid of
him. A long procession of lovers had left her
wholly incapable of shame. But the child would
be a worry — and she did not mean to be worried !
If the father had better instincts — well, let him
follow them. He did. He employed Molin,
Madame de Tencin's doctor, to find out the baby's
nurse, Anne Lemaire, and claim the little creature
from her.

The great d'Alembert told Madame Suard many
years after how Destouches drove all round Paris
with the baby (' with a head no bigger than an
apple') in his arms, trying to find for him a
suitable foster-mother. But little Jean Baptiste
Lerond seemed to be dying, and no one would
take him. At last, however, Destouches dis-
covered, living in the Kue Michel-Lecomte, a poor
glazier's wife, whose motherly soul was touched by

D'ALEMBEET: THE THINKER 6

the infant's piteous plight, and who took him to her
love and care, and kept him there for fifty years.

History has concerned itself much less with
Madame Kousseau than with Madame de Tencin.
Yet it was the glazier's wife who was d'Alem-
bert's real mother after all. If she was low-
born and ignorant, she had yet the happiest of
all acquirements — she knew how to win love and
to keep it. The great d'Alembert, universally
acclaimed as one of the first intellects of Europe,
had ever for this simple person, who defined a
philosopher as ' a fool who torments himself during
his life that people may talk of him when he is
dead,' the tender reverence which true greatness,
and only true greatness perhaps, can bear towards
homely goodness. From her he learnt the bless-
ing of peace and obscurity. From his association
with her he learnt his noble idea — difficult in any
age, but in that age of degrading luxury and self-
indulgence well nigh impossible — that it is sinful
to enjoy superfluities while other men want
necessaries. His hidden life in the dark attic
above her husband's shop made it possible for him
to do that life's work. For nearly half a century
he knew no other home. When he left her roof at
last, in obedience to the voice of the most master-
ful of all human passions, he still retained for her
the tenderest affection, and bestowed upon her and

6 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEB

her grandchildren the kindness of one or the kindest
hearts that ever beautified a great intelligence.

Little Jean Baptiste was put to a school in
the Faubourg Saint- Antoine, where he passed as
Madame Kousseau's son. General Destouches paid
the expenses of this schooling, took a keen pleasure
in the child's brightness and precocity, and came
often to see him. One day he persuaded Madame
de Tencin to accompany him. The seven-year-old
Jean Baptiste remembered that scene all his life.
' Confess, Madame,' says Destouches, when they
had listened to the boy's clever answers to his
master's questions, ' that it was a pity to abandon
such a child.' Madame rose at once. ' Let us go.
I see it is going to be verj^ uncomfortable for
me here.' She never came again.

Destouches died in 1726, when his son was
nine years old. He left the boy twelve hundred
livres, and commended him to the care of his
relatives. Through them, at the age of twelve,
Jean Baptiste received the great favour of being
admitted to the College of the Four Nations,
founded by Mazarin, and in 1729 the most ex-
clusive school in France. Fortunately for its new
scholar it was something besides fashionable, and
did its best to satisfy his extraordinary thirst for
knowledge. His teachers were all priests and
Jansenists, and nourished their apt scholar on

D'ALEMBEET: THE THINKER 7

Jansenist literature, imbuing him with the fashion-
able theories of Descartes. How soon was it that
they began to hope and dream that in the gentle
student called Lerond, living on a narrow pit-
tance above a tradesman's shop, they had found
a new Pascal, a mighty enemy of the Archfiend
Jesuitism ?

But beneath his timid and modest exterior
there lay already an intellect of marvellous
strength and clearness, a relentless logic that
tested and weighed every principle instilled in
him, every theory masquerading as a fact. He
quickly became equally hostile to both Jesuit and
Jansenist. It was at school that he learnt to hate
with an undying hatred, religion — the religion
that in forty years launched, on account of the
Bull Unigenitus, forty thousand lettres de cachet,
that made men forget not only their Christianity
but their humanity, and give themselves over
body and soul to the devouring fever called
fanaticism. At school also he conceived his
passion for mathematics, that love of exact truth
which no Jansenist priest, however subtle, could
make him regard as a dangerous error.

When he was eighteen, in 1735, he took his
degree of Bachelor of Arts and changed his name.
D'Alembertis thought to be an anagram on Baptiste
Lerond. Anaejrams were fashionable, and one

8 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

Arouet, who had elected to be called Voltaire, had
made such an alteration of good omen. D'Alembert
went on studying at the College, but throughout
his studies mathematics were wooing him from all
other pursuits. The taste, however, was so unlu-
crative, and the income from twelve hundred livres
so small, that a profession became a necessity.
The young man conscientiously qualified for a
barrister. But ' he loved only good causes ' and
was naturally shy. He never appeared at the Bar.
Then he bethought him of medicine. He
would be a doctor! But again and again the
siren voice of his dominant taste called him
back to her. His friends — those omniscient
friends always ready to put a spoke in the wheel
of genius — entreated him to be practical, to re-
member his poverty, and to make haste to grow
rich. He yielded to them so far that one day he
carried all his geometrical books to one of their
houses, and went back to the garret at Madame
Eousseau's to study medicine and nothing else in
the world. But the geometrical problems dis-
turbed his sleep.

One master-passion in the breast,

Like Aaron's serpent, swallowed all the rest.

Fate wanted d'Alembert, the great mathematician,
not some prosperous, unproductive mediocrity of
a Paris apothecary. The crowning blessing of

D'ALEMBERT: THE THINKER 9

life, to be born with a bias to some pursuit, was
this man's to the full.

He yielded to Nature and to God. He brought
back the books he had abandoned, flung aside
those for which he had neither taste nor aptitude,
and at twenty gave himself to the work for which
he had been created.

Some artist should put on canvas the picture
of this student, sitting in his ill-aired garret with
its narrow prospect of ' three ells of sky,' poor,
delicate, obscure — or rich, rather, in the purest of
earthly enjoyments, the pursuit of truth for its
own sake. He could not afford to buy many of
the books he needed, so he borrowed them from
public libraries. He left the work of the day
anticipating with joy the work of the morrow.
For the world he cared nothing, and of him it
knew nothing. Fame ? — he did not want it.
Wealth? — he could do without it. Poor as he
was, there was no time when he even thought of
taking pupils, or using the leisure he needed for
study in making money by a professorship.

To give knowledge was his work and his aim ;
to make knowledge easier for others he left to
some lesser man. His style had seldom the grace
and clearness which can make, and which in many
of his fellow-workers did make, the abstrusest
reasoning charm like romance. D'Alembert left

10 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

Diderot to put his thought into irresistible words,
and Voltaire and Turgot to translate it into im-
mortal deeds.

When he was two-and-twenty, in 1739, d'Alem-
bert began his connection with the Academy of
Sciences. In 1743 he published his ' Treatise on
Dynamics.' Now little read and long superseded,
it placed him at one bound, and at six-and-twenty
years old, among the first geometricians of Europe.
Modest, frugal, retiring as he was and remained, he
was no more only the loving and patient disciple of
science. He was its master and teacher. In 1746
his ' Treatise on the Theory of Winds ' gained him
a prize in the Academy of Berlin, and first brought
him into relationship with Frederick the Great.

Two years later, when her son was of daily
growing renown, Madame de Tencin died. The
story that, when he had become famous and she
would fain have acknowledged him, he had re-
pudiated her, saying he had no mother but the
glazier's wife, d'Alembert, declares Madame Suard,
always denied. ' I should never have refused her
endearments — it would have been too sweet to me
to recover her.' That answer is more in keeping
with a temperament but too gentle and forgiving,
than the spirited repulse. It was in keeping
also with the life of Madame de Tencin that
even death should leave her indifferent to her

D'ALEMBEET: THE THINKER 11

child. She thought no more of him, he said, in
the one than in the other. Her money she left to
her doctor.

If the studious poverty oi the life in the
glazier's attic spared d'Alembert acquaintances,
it did not deprive him of friends.

Then living in Paris, some six-and-thirty years
old, the author of the 'Philosophical Thoughts,'
and the most fascinating scoundrel in France, was
Denis Diderot. With the quiet d'Alembert, of
morals almost austere and of hidden, frugal life,
what could a Diderot have in common? Some-
thing more than the attraction of opposites drew
them together. The vehement and all-embracing
imagination of the one iired the calm reason of the
other. The hot head and the cool one were laid
together, and the result was the great Encyclo-
pgedia.

The first idea of the pair was modest enough —
to translate into French the English Encyclopaedia
of Chambers. But had not brother Voltaire said
that no man who could make an adequate trans-
lation ever wasted his time in translating ? They
soon out-ran so timid an ambition. The thing
must not only be spontaneous work ; it must
wholly surpass all its patterns and prototypes. It
must be not an Encyclopsedia, but the Encyclo-
paedia. Every man of talent in France must bring

12 THE FEIBNDS OF VOLTAIRE

a stone towards the building of the great Temple.
From Switzerland, old Voltaire shall pour forth
inspiration, encouragement, incentive. Eousseau
shall lend it the glow of his passion, and Grimm
his journalistic versatility. Helvetius shall contri-
bute — d'Holbach, Turgot, Morellet, Marmontel,
Eaynal, La Harpe, de Jaucourt, Duclos.

And the Preliminary Discourse shall be the
work of d'Alembert.

An envious enemy once dismissed him scorn-
fully as

Chancelier de Parnasse,

Qui se croit un grand homme et fit une preface.

Yet if he had written nothing but that Preface
he would still have had noble titles to fame. It
contained, as he himself said, the quintessence of
twenty years' study. If his style was usually cold
and formal, it was not so now. With warmest
eloquence and boldest brush he painted the picture
of the progress of the human mind since the in-
vention of printing. From the lofty heights man's
intellect had scaled there stood out yet mightier
heights for him to dare ! Advance ! advance ! It
ever preface said anything, the Preface to the
great Encyclopaedia says this. Clothed with light
and fire, that dearest son of d'Alembert's genius
went forth to illuminate and to astound the world.
At first the Encyclopaedia was not only heard

D'ALEMBERT: THE THINKER 13

gladly by the common people, but was splendidly
set forth with the approbation and Privilege du
Roi. Even the wise and thoughtful melancholy of
d'Alembert's temperament may have been cheered
by such good fortune, while the sanguine Diderot
naturally felt convinced it would last for ever.

Both worked unremittingly. His authorship
of the Preface immediately flung open to d'Alem-
bert all the salons in Paris, and for the first time
in his life he began to go into society. Then
Frederick the Great made him a rich and splendid
offer, the Presidency of the Berlin Academy. Con-
sider that though the man was famous he was still
very poor. The little pension which was his all
' is hardly enough to keep me if I have the happi-
ness or the misfortune to live to be old.' From the
Government of his country he feared everything
and hoped nothing. He was only thirty-five years
of age. A new world was opened to him. The
glazier's attic he could exchange for a palace, and
the homely kindness of an illiterate foster-mother
for the magnificent endearments of a philosophic
king. Was it only the painful example of friend
Voltaire's angry wretchedness as Frederick's guest
that made him refuse an offer so lavish and so
dazzling ? It was rather that he had the rare wis-
dom to recognise happiness when he had it and did
not mistake it for some phantom will-o'-the-wisp

U THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

whom distance clothed with light. *The peace
I enjoy is so perfect,' he wrote, ' I dare run
no risk of disturbing it. ... I do not doubt the
King's goodness . . . only that the conditions
essential to happiness are not in his power.'

Any man who is offered in place of quiet con-
tent that most fleeting and unsubstantial of all
chimeras — fame and glory — should read d'Alem-
bert's answer to Frederick the Great.

Frederick's royal response to it was the offer of
a pension of twelve hundred livres.

In September 1754 the fourth volume of the
Encyclopaedia was hailed by the world with a
burst of enthusiasm and applause, and in the Decem-
ber of that year d'Alembert received as a reward for
his indefatigable labours a chair in the French
Academy. He had only accepted it on condition
that he spoke his mind freely on all points and
made court to no man. The speech with which
he took his seat, though constantly interrupted
with clapping and cries of delight, was not good,
said Grimm. All d'Alembert's addresses and eloges
spoken at the Academy leave posterity, indeed,
as cold as they left the astute German journalist.
The man was a mathematician, a creature of
reason. The passion that was to rule that reason
and dominate his Hfe was not the gaudy and
shallow passion of the orator.

D'ALEMBERT: THE THINKER 15

In 1756 he went to stay with the great head of
his party, Voltaire, at the DeHces, near Geneva.
The Patriarch was sixty-two years old, but with
the activity and the enthusiasm of youth. At his
house and at his table d'Alembert met constantly
and observed deeply the Calvinistic pastors of
Geneva. He returned to Paris with his head
full of the most famous article the Encyclopaedia
was to know. At the back of his mind was a
certain request of his host's, that he should also
make a few remarks on the benefits that play-acting
would confer on the Calvinistic temperament.

No article in that 'huge folio dictionary'
brewed so fierce a storm or had consequences so
memorable and far-reaching as d'Alembert's article
'Geneva.' In his reserved and formal style he
punctiliously complimented the descendants of
Calvin as preferring reason to faith, sound sense to
dogma, and as having a religion which, weighed
and tested, was nothing but a perfect Socinianism.
Voltaire laughed long in his sleeve, and in private
executed moral capers of delight. The few words
on the advantages of play-acting, which he had
begged might be added, had not been forgotten.

The Genevan pastors took solemn and heartburn-
ing counsel together, and on the head of the quiet
worker in the attic in Paris there burst a hurricane
which might have beaten down coarser natures

16 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

and frightened stouter hearts. Calvinism fell upon
him, whose sole crime had been to show her the
logical outcome of her doctrines, with the fierce
fury of a desperate cause. Ketract! retract! or
at least give the names of those of our pastors who
made you believe in the rationalism of our creed !
As for the remarks on plays, why, Jean Jacques
Eousseau, our citizen and your brother philo-
sopher, shall answer those, and in the dazzling
rhetoric of the immortal 'Letter on Plays' give,
with all the magic and enchantment of his sophist's
genius, the case against the theatre.

Then, on March 8, 1759, the paternal govern-
ment of France, joining hands with Geneva, sup-
pressed by royal edict that Encyclopaedia of which
a very few years earlier it had solemnly approved.
The accursed thing was burnt by the hangman.
The printers and publishers were sent to the
galleys or to death. The permit to continue
pubHshing the work was rescinded. The full
flowing fountain of knowledge was dammed,
and the self-denial of d'Alembert's patient life
wasted. The gentle heart, which had never
harmed living creature, fell stricken beneath the
torrent of filthy fury which the gutter press
poured upon him. His Majesty — his besotted
Majesty, King Louis the Fifteenth — finds in the
Encyclopaedia, forsooth, ' maxims tending to de-

D'ALEMBEET: THE THINKER 17

stroy Eoyal authority and to establish indepen-
dence . . . corruption of morals, irreligion, and
unbelief.' Sycophant and toadying Paris went
with him. Furious and blaspheming, passionate
Diderot came out to meet the foe. Dancing with
rage, old Voltaire at Delices could only calm him-
self enough to hold a pen in his shaking fingers
and pour out incentives to his brothers in Paris to
fight till the death. To him injustice was ever the
bugle-call to battle. But not to d'Alembert. He
shrank back into his shell, dumb and wounded.
' I do not know if the Encyclopedia will be con-
tinued,' he wrote, ' but I am sure it will not
be continued by me.' Even the stirring incite-
ments of his chief could not alter his purpose.
He had offered sight to the blind, and they had
chosen darkness ; he would bring them the light
no more. That Diderot considered him traitor
and apostate did not move him. He would not
quarrel with that affectionate, hot-headed brother
worker, but for himself that chapter of his life was
finished, and he turned the page.

In the very same year he gave to a thankless
world his ' Elements of Philosophy ; ' and he again
refused Frederick the Great's invitation to ex-
change persecuting Paris for the Presidency of the
Berlin Academy. But there was no reason why

c

18 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

he should not escape from his troubles for a time
and become Frederick's visitor.

In 1762 he went to Berlin for two months, and
found the great King a clever, generous, and
devoted friend. But though he continued to beg
d'Alembert to stay with him permanently, and
was lavish of gifts and promises, the wise and
judicious visitor was wholly proof against the
royal blandishments. In the same year he refused
a yet more dazzling offer — to be tutor to Catherine
the Great's son. He had already in Paris, not
only ties, which might be broken, but a tie, which
he found indissoluble.

In 1765, three years after Catherine's offer had
been made and declined, d'Alembert, when he was
forty-eight years old, was attacked by a severe
illness, which, said his accommodating doctor,
required larger and airier rooms than those
in his good old nurse's home. He was moved
from the famihar Eue Michel-Lecomte to the
Boulevard du Temple. There Mademoiselle de
Lespinasse joined him and nursed him back to
health.

In all the story of d'Alembert's life, in that
age of unbridled licence, no woman's name is con-
nected with his save this one's. Fifteen years
earlier he had made the acquaintance of Madame
du Deffand. To the blind old worldling, who

D'ALEMBEKT: THE THINKER 19

loved Horace Walpole and wrote immortal letters,
he stood in the nature of a dear and promising
son. For many years he was always about her
house. His wit and his charm, seasoned by a
gentle spice of irony and a delightful talent for
telling stories and enjoying them himself, naturally
endeared him to the old woman whose one hell
was boredom. On his side, he came because he
liked her, and stayed because he loved Mademoi-
selle de Lespinasse. The history of that menage^
of the brilliant, impulsive, undisciplined girl, with
her plain face and her matchless charm, and of the
blind old woman she tended, deceived, and out-
witted, has been told in fiction as well as in his-
tory. How when Madame du Deffand was asleep,
her poor companion held for herself reunions of
the bright, particular stars of her mistress's firma-
ment, and how the old woman, rising a little too
early one day, came into the room and with her
sightless eyes saw all, is one of the famihar anec-
dotes of literature.

Long before this dramatic denouement^ d'Alem-
bert and Julie de Lespinasse had been something
more than friends. But now Mademoiselle saw
herself cast adrift on the world. She flung to it
her reputation, and yielded, not so much to the en-
treaties of d'Alembert's love, as to the more pitiful
pleading his solitude and sickness made to the

c 2

20 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

warm maternity in her woman's heart. She nursed
him back to convalescence, and then lived beneath
the same roof with him in the Eue Belle Chasse.

Picture the man with his wide, wise intelli-
gence and his diffident and gentle nature, and the
woman with her brilliant intuition and her quick,
glowing impulse. To his exact logic she could
add feeling, passion, sympathy ; his frigid and
awkward style she could endow with life and fire.
Many of his manuscripts are covered with her
handwriting. Some, she certainly inspired. She
had read widely and felt keenly, and her lover had
weighed, pondered, considered. For him, who had
for himself no ambition, she could dare and hope
all. The perpetual Secretaryship of the Academy
shall be turned from a dream to a fact ! In that
age of women's influence no woman had in her frail
hands more to give and to withhold than this poor
companion, whose marvellous power over men and
destinies lay not in her head, but in her heart.
The true complement of a d'Alembert, daring where
he was timid, fervent where he was cold, a woman's
feeling to quicken his man's reason — here should
have been indeed the marriage of true minds.

Oh, I must feel your brain prompt mine,
Your heart anticipate my heart.
You must be just before, in fine.
See and make me see, for your part,
New depths of the divine !

D'ALEMBERT: THE THINKER 21

Yet d'Alembert's is the most piteous love-story
in history. If Mademoiselle had yielded to his
sadness and his loneliness, she had never loved
him. Only a year after she had joined him,
d'Alembert, alluding to some rumours which had
been afloat concerning their marriage, wrote bit-
terly, ' What should /do with a wife and children ? '
But there was only one real obstacle to their
union. Across Mademoiselle's undisciplined heart
there lay already the shadows of another passion.

From the first the household in the Kue
Belle Chasse had been absolutely dominated by
the woman. ' In love, who loves least, rules.'
D'Alembert was in bondage while she was free.
To keep her, he submitted to humours full of
bitterness and sharpness — the caprices of that in-
different affection which gives nothing and exacts
all. In her hands, he was as a child ; his philo-
sophies went to the winds ; his very reason was
prostrate. How soon was it he began to guess he
had a rival in her heart ?

It was not till after her death that he found
out for certain that less than two years after she
came to him she had given herself, body and soul,
to the young Marquis de Mora. But what he
did not know, he must have greatly suspected.
It was he who wrote her letters and ran her
errands. Grimm recorded in the ' Literary

22 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

Correspondence ' the prodigious ascendency she
had acquired over all his thoughts and actions.
' No luckless Savoyard of Paris . . . does so many
wearisome commissions as the first geometrician
of Europe, the chief of the Encyclopa3dic sect, the
dictator of our Academies, does for Mademoiselle.'
He would post her fervent outpourings to the man
who had supplanted him, and call for the replies
at the post-office that she might receive them an
hour or two earlier. What wonder that over such
a character, a nature like Mademoiselle's rode
roughshod, that she hurt and bruised him a hun-
dred times a day, and wounded while she despised
him ? No woman ever truly loves a man who does
not exact from her not only complete fidelity to
himself, but fidelity to all that is best and highest
in her own nature.

D'Alembert had indeed in full measure the
virtue of his defects. If it was a crime to be tender
to her sins, it was nobihty to be gentle to her
sufferings. He bore and forbore with her end-
lessly. Always patient and good-humoured, think-
ing greatly of her and httle of himself, abundant
in compassion for her ruined nerves and the
querulous feverishness of her ill health — here
surely were some of the noble traits of a good
love. He read to her, watched by her, tended her,
and in the matchless society they gathered round

D'ALEMBEET: THE THINKER 23

them was abundantly content to be nothing, that
she might be all.

Their life together in the Eue Belle Chase
had not in the least shocked their easy-going
world. Many persons comfortably maintained
that their association was the merest friendship —
heedless of that amply proven fact that where
people avoid evil, they avoid also the appearance
of evil. The eighteenth century, indeed, even if
it saw any difference between vice and virtue,
which is doubtful, did not in the least mind if its
favourites were vicious or virtuous, provided they
were not dull. D'Alembert and Mademoiselle de
Lespinasse did not fall under that ban. The her-
mit life the man had led was over for ever. In her
modest room in that dingy street, Mademoiselle
held every night the most famous salon in Paris.

Most of the salons may be exhaustively de-
scribed as having been nourished on a little eau
Sucre and a great deal of wit. But to this one wit
alone was light, food, and air. Mademoiselle did
not require to give dinners like Madame Necker,
or suppers like Madame du Deffand ; neither for
the beauty which, later, was to make men for-
give the mental limitations of Madame Eecamier,
had she need or use. Tall, pale, and slender,
with her infinite, unconscious tact, her mental
grace, and her divine sympathy, her passage

THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEB

^^ough the social life of her age has left the

'Abtle perfume of some delicate flower. To be her

i^end was to feel complete, understood, satisfied.

fc her, as to a sister of consolation, came

fcndorcet, marquis, mathematician, philosopher;

-^fent-Pierre, the pupil of Eousseau and the creator

^' ' Paul and Virginia ; ' La Harpe, whom she

'^vS to help to the Academy ; Henault, whom she

hd charmed from Madame du DefFand ; Turgot,

'^astellux, Marmontel. And quietly effacing

himself, with that true greatness which is never

;4?aid to be made of little account, was Mademoi-

if^fte's lover and the noblest intellect of them all,

d'^^embert.

There is no more delightful trait in his charac-
ter than this exquisite talent for modesty. With
his spare form always dressed from head to foot
in clothes of one colour, the aim of d'Alembert
was both physically and mentally, as it were, to
escape notice. True, when he talked, the listener
must needs marvel at the breadth, the variety, the
exhaustless interests of the mind, and its perfect
simplicity and straightforwardness. But he did
not want to talk much. He liked better to listen.
He preferred in society, as he preferred in life,
to think while other men said and did.

No social pleasures could either supersede the
work of his life, or make compensation for the

D'ALEMBEKT: THE THINKER i<^

sorrows of his soul. He had already thrown i
his lot with Mademoiselle when he published th
most daring of all his books, ' The History of th
Destruction of the Jesuits.' Her treachery hfhi
shattered his life for five years, when he a.ske<
Frederick the Great for a sum of money Ts^hic
would enable him to travel and heal his broke
health and heart. In 1770, with young Condorc
for his companion, he left Paris for Italy, stoppc
at Ferney, and spent his whole leave of abfsenr
with Voltaire.

It was an oasis in the desert of the feveri
existence to which he had condemned himself,
mighty speculation, in splendid visions of
future of the race, in passionate argument on the
immortality of the soul and the being and nature
of God, he forgot his personal sorrows. The mind
dominated and the heart was still. What nights
the three must have spent together — Voltaire with
his octogenarian's intellect as keen and bright as a
boy's, the young Marquis, sharp-set to learn, and
d'Alembert with his 'just mind and inexhaustible
imagination' — when they could get rid of that
babbling inconsequence, Voltaire's niece, Madame
Denis, and sit hour after hour discussing, planning,
dreaming ! The quiet d'Alembert went, as quiet
people often do, far beyond his impulsive and out-
spoken companions in speculative daring. Though

26 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

there is not an anti- Christian line in any of his
pubHshed writings except his correspondence, yet
the scepticism of this gentle mathematician far
exceeded that of him who is accounted the Prince
of Unbelievers, and where his host was a hotly
convinced Deist, d'Alembert only thought the
probabilities in favour of Theism, and was far more
Voltairian than Voltaire. It was the old Pontiff of
the Church of Anti- Christ who stopped a conver-
sation at his table wherein d'Alembert had spoken
of the very existence of God as a moot point, by
sending the servants out of the room, and then
turning to his guests with — ' And now, gentlemen,
continue your attack upon God. But as I do not
want to be murdered or robbed to-night by my
servants, they had better not hear you.'

The visit lasted in all two months. D'Alem-
bert abandoned the Italian journey, offered King
Frederick his change, and returned to Paris.

In 1772 he was made Perpetual Secretary of
the French Academy. He, whose needs, said
Grimm, were always the measure of his ambitions,
had scaled heights, not beyond his deserts, but
beyond his wishes. He was also a member of the
scientific Academies of Prussia, Eussia, Portugal,
Naples, Turin, Norway, Padua, and of the literary
academies of Sweden and Bologna. But if ' the end
of all ambition is to be happy at home,' d'Alembert

D'ALEMBEET: THE THINKER 27

had failed. When the Perpetual Secretaryship
was still a new and dazzling possession, the Per-
petual Secretary found at home the woman to
whom he was captive soul and body, in the throes
of another passion. False to de Mora, as she had
been false to him, she was then writing to de
Guibert those love-letters which have given her
a place beside Sappho and Elo'isa and have added
a classic to literature. It was d'Alembert's part
to listen to self-reproaches whose justice he might
well guess, to look into the depths of a tenderness
in which he had no share. Once he gave her his
portrait with these lines beneath it :

Et dites quelquefois en voyant cette image

De tous ceux que j'aimai, qui m'aima comme lui ?

She herself said that of all the feelings she had
inspired, his alone had not brought her wretched-
ness.

In 1775 de Guibert was married. The mar-
riage was Mademoiselle's death-blow. The fever
of the soul became a disease of the body. Some-
times bitterly repentant and sometimes only cap-
tious and difficult ; now, her true self full of
tenderness and charm ; and now, reckless, selfish,
despairing — d'Alembert's patience and goodness
were inexhaustible. True to his character, he
stood aside that to the last her friends might visit

28 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

her, that to the last she might help and feel for
them.

But though the spirit still triumphed at
moments over the body, the end was near. When
her misery was dulled by opium, d'Alembert was
always watching, unheeded, at her bedside. It
was the attitude of his life. When she became
conscious, he was there still. Before she died,
she asked his pardon; but de Guibert's was the
last name upon her lips. She died on May 23,
1776, not yet forty-five years old.

D'Alembert's grief seems to have taken by
surprise many short-sighted friends who had sup-
posed that quiet exterior to hide a cold, or an
unawakened, heart. He was utterly crushed and
broken. His life had lost at once its inspiration
and its meaning. For the sake of Mademoiselle
he had grown old without family and without
hope. His friends, in that age of noble friend-
ships, did their best to comfort him. But his
wounds were deeper than they knew. With a
super-refinement of selfishness or cruelty. Made-
moiselle had left him her Correspondence. She
had not preserved in it one single line of the many
letters he had himself written to her, while it
contained full and certain proofs of her double
infidelity.

He who has lost only those of whose faith and

D'ALEMBEET: THE THINKER 29

truth he is sure, has not yet reached the depth of
human desolation.

After a while, d'Alembert tried to return to
his first affection — that cold but faithful mistress,
his mathematical studies. At the Academy he
pronounced the eloge of Louis de Sacy, who had
been the lover of the Marquise de Lambert. For
the first time he looked into his heart and wrote,
and thus for the first time he touched the hearts
of others ; the cold style took fire, and beneath the
clumsy periods welled tears.

But the writer was consumed to the soul with
grief and weariness. This was not the man who
could use sorrow as a spur to new endeavour and
to nobler work. Before the persecutions which
had assailed the Encyclopaedia he had bowed his
head and taken covert, and the death of his mis-
tress broke not only his heart, but his spirit and
his life. From Madame Marmontel and from
Thomas, he derived, it is said, some sort of com-
fort : Condorcet was as a son ; but with Made-
moiselle's death the light of her society had gone
out. The friends who remained were but pale
stars in a dark sky. DAlembert was growing
old. He suffered from a cruel disease and could
not face the horrors of the operation which might
have relieved it. ' Those are fortunate who have
courage,' said he ; ' for myself, I have none.'

30 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

It was life, not death, he dreaded. What use then
to suffer only to prolong suffering ?

The mental enlightenment he had given the
world, the wider knowledge which he had lived
to impart, consoled this dying thinker scarcely at
all. He was to his last hour what he had been
when Mademoiselle took ill-fated compassion on
his dependence and loneliness — a child, affection-
ate, solitary, tractable, with the great mind always
weighed down by the supersensitiveness of a child's
heart and with a child's clinging need of care and
tenderness. He died on October 29, 1783.

The man whose only reason for dreading
poverty had been lest he should be forced to
reduce his charities, left, as might have been
expected, a very small fortune. Condorcet was
his residuary legatee, and made his eloge in both
the Academies.

Diderot himself was dying when he heard of
his old friend's death. ' A great light has gone
out,' said he. Euler, d'Alembert's brother, and
sometimes his rival, geometrician, survived him
only a few months. And Voltaire, the quick and
life-giving spirit of the vast movement of which
d'Alembert was the Logic, the Eeason, the
Thought, had already died to earth, though he
lived to everlasting fame.

D'Alembert owes his greatest reputation to

D'ALEMBEET: THE THINKER 31

geometry. But, as Grimm said, in that depart-
ment only geometricians can exactly render him
his due : ' He added to the discoveries of the Eulers
. . . and. the Newtons.' To the general public
his great title to glory lies in the mighty help he
gave to that great monument of Voltairian philo-
sophy, the Encyclopaedia. The Preface was 'a
work for which he had no model.' By it, he in-
troduced to the world that book which Diderot
produced, and which, except the Bible and the
Koran, may be justly said to have been the most
influential book in history ; which gave France,
and, through France, Europe, that new light and
knowledge which brought with them a nobler
civilisation and a recognition of the universal
rights of man.

In himself, d'Alembert was always rather a
great intelligence than a great character. To the
magnificence of the one he owed all that has made
him immortal, and to the weakness of the other the
sorrows and the failures of his life. For it is by
character and not by intellect the world is won.

32 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

n

DIDEROT: THE TALKER

Some hundred and eighty odd years ago, in a little
town in France, a wild boy slipped out of his room
at midnight, and crept downstairs in his stocking-
feet with the wicked intent of running away to
Paris. This time-honoured escapade was defeated
by the appearance of Master Denis's resolute
father with the household keys in his hand.
' Where are you going ? ' says he. ' To Paris, to
join the Jesuits.' ' Certainly ; I will take you
there myself to-morrow.' And Denis retires tamely
and ignominiously to bed.

The next morning the good old father (a
master-cutler in the town of Langres) escorted his
scapegrace to the capital, as he had desired,
entered him at Harcourt College, stayed himself
for a fortnight at a neighbouring inn to see that
the boy adhered to his intentions ; and then went
home. The adventure was redeemed from the
commonplace in that this scapegrace would fain
have run away, not from school, but to it ; and

";nM!:!li:i"ii"''tli|! ''llWfiilllitIi

DENIS DIDEROT.
From an Engraving by Henriquez, after the Portrait by Vavloo.

DIDEEOT: THE TALKEB 33

that he was acting under an influence much more
powerful than the cheap, adventurous fiction which
generally prompts such schemes. When he was
twelve years old the Jesuits had tonsured Denis's
hot head, and no doubt designed all it contained
for their service.

At the college Denis spent his time in learning
a great deal for himself, and doing, with brilliant
ease and the most complete good-nature, a great
deal of work of his school-fellows. He was
himself astoundingly clever and astoundingly
careless. He learnt mathematics, which could not
make him exact, Latin, and English. With that
charming readiness to do the stupid boys' lessons
for them {blanchir les chiffons des autres, the
talent came to be called when he grew older),
with his inimitable love of life, his jolly, happy-
go-lucky disposition, his open hand and heart,
and his merry face, this should surely have been
the most popular schoolboy that ever lived.

One of his friends was Bernis — to be poet.
Cardinal, and protege of Madame de Pompadour —
and the pair would dine together at six sous a
head at a neighbouring restaurant.

The schooldays were all too short. The
practical master- cutler at Langres soon inti-
mated to Denis that it was time to choose a
profession. But Denis declines to be a doctor,

D

34 THE FRIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

because he has no turn for murder ; or a lawyer,
because he has no taste for doing other people's
business. In brief, he does not want to be any-
thing. He wants to learn, to study, to look round
him. But a shrewd old tradesman is not going
to give, even if he could afford to give, any son of
his the money to do that. Denis had at home
a younger brother, who was to be a priest (' that
cursed saint,' the graceless Denis called him
hereafter), a sister, good and sensible like her
father, and a mother, who was tender and foolish
over her truant boy, after the fashion of mothers
all the world over. Here were three mouths to
feed. Denis loved his father with all the im-
petuous affection of his temperament. He was
delighted when, some years later, he went back to
Langres and a fellow-townsman grasped him by
the arm saying : ' M. Diderot, you are a good man,
but if you think you will ever be as good a man
as your father, you are much mistaken.' But
Diderot had never the sort of affection that con-
sists in doing one's utmost for the object of the
affection. He preferred to be a care and a
trouble to his family and to live by his wits,
harum-scarum, merry, and poor. He chose that
life, and abided by the choice for ten years.

Three times in that period the old servant of
the family tramped all the way from Langres to

DIDEKOT: THE TALKER 36

Paris with little stores of money hidden in her
dress for this dear, naughty scapegrace of a
Master Denis; but except for this, he lived on
his wits in the most literal sense of the term.
He made catalogues and translations; he wrote
sermons and thought himself well paid at fifty
eats the homily; he became a tutor — until the
pupil's stupidity bored him, when he threw up
the situation and went hungry to bed. He once
indeed so far commanded himself as to remain in
this capacity for three months. Then he sought
his employer; he could endure it no more. 'I
am making men of your children, perhaps; but
they are fast making a child of me. I am only
too well off and comfortable in your house, but
I must leave it.' And he left.

One Shrove Tuesday he fainted from hunger
in his wretched lodgings, and was restored and fed
by his landlady. He took a vow that day, and
kept it, that, if he had anything to give, he would
never refuse a man in need. By the next morning
he was as light-hearted as usual again. A bright
idea, even the recollection of a few apt lines from
Horace, would always restore his cheerfulness.
He enjoyed indeed all the blessings of a sanguine
nature, and fell into all its faults. The facts that
his father was paying his debts, that often he had
to sponge on his friends for a dinner, or trick a

D 2

36 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

tradesman for an advantage he could not buy,
neither troubled him nor made him work. It is
no doubt to his credit that he never stooped, as
he might easily have done, to be the literary
parasite of some great man, to prostitute his
talents to praise and fawn on some ignoble patron.
But though that gay, profligate existence has been
often made to sound romantic on paper, it was
squalid and shabby enough in reality, with that
shabbiness which is of the soul.

In the year 1743, when Diderot was thirty
years old, he must needs fall in love. He was
lodging with a poor woman and her daughter who
kept themselves by doing fine needlework. Anne
Toinette Champion (Nanette, Diderot called her)
was not only exquisitely fresh and pretty, but she
was good, simple, and honest. To gain access to
her Diderot stooped to one of the tricks to which
his life had made him used. He pretended that
he was going to enter a Jesuit seminary, and
employed Nanette to make him the necessary
outfit. His mouth of gold did the rest. No one,
perhaps, who did not live with Diderot and hear
him talk ' as never man talked,' who did not know
him in the flesh and fall under the personal
influence of his magnetic and all-compeUing
charm, will ever fully understand it. ' Utterly
unclean, scandalous, shameless' as many honest

DIDEROT: THE TALKER 37

and upright people knew him to be, he fascinated
them all. Something indeed of that fascination
still lingers about him, as the scent of a flower
may cling to a coarse, stained parchment. Eead
the facts of his life, as briefly and coldly stated
in some biographical dictionary, and most men
will easily dismiss him as a great genius and a
great scoundrel. Eead the thousand anecdotes
that have gathered about his name, of the love
his contemporaries bore him, of his generosity, his
glowing affections, his passionate pity for sorrow,
and his hot zeal for humanity, and it is easy to
understand not only the mighty part Diderot
played in the great movement which prepared men
for freedom and the French Eevolution, but also
his insistent claims on their love and forgiveness.

A little seamstress could not, in the nature of
things, resist him long. The hopeful lover went
to Langres to obtain his father's consent to his
marriage, which was of course refused. At the
date of his wedding, November 6, 1743, Denis
had published scarcely anything, had no certain
sources of income, and very few uncertain ones.
He was, moreover, at first so jealous of his dearest
Nanette that he made her give up her trade of
needlework, as it brought her too much into
contact with the outer world. The pair lived on
her mother's savings; and then Denis translated

38 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

a history of Greece from the English, and kept the
wolf from the door a little longer.

Poverty fell, as ever, more hardly on the wife
than on the husband. The ever popular Diderot
was often asked out to dine with his friends, and
always went ; while at home Nanette feasted on
dry bread, to be sure that this fine lover of hers
should be able to have his cup of coffee and his
game of chess at the cafe of the Eegency as usual.
Of course Denis took advantage of her talent for
self-sacrifice. His writings contain much senti-
mental pity, expressed in the most beautiful
language, for the condition and the physical disad-
vantages of women ; and he spoke of himself most
comfortably as a good husband and father, and
honestly believed that he was both. But he began
to neglect his wife directly his first passion for
her was spent. She was not perfect, it is true. Of
a certain rigidity in her goodness, and a certain
bourgeois narrowness in her view of life, she may
be justly accused. But it remains undeniable that
she was thrifty and unselfish at home, while her
husband was profligate and self-indulgent abroad,
that she saved and worked for her children, while
he wrote fine pages on paternal devotion, and that
he never gave her the consideration and forbear-
ance he demanded /r^m her as a matter of course.
Before her first child was born the poor girl had

DIDEKOT: THE TALKEB 39

lost her mother, and had no one in all the world to
depend on but that most untrustworthy creature
on earth, a genius of bad character.

In the year 1745 Denis sent her to Langres for
a long visit to his parents, to effect if possible a
reconciliation with them.

The man who called himself ' the apologist of
strong passions,' who thought marriage ' a senseless
vow,' and ' was always very near to the position
that there is no such thing as an absolute rule of
right and wrong,' would not be likely to be faith-
ful. He was not faithful. There soon loomed
on the scene a Madame Puisieux (the wife of a
barrister), aged about five- and-twenty, charming,
accomplished, dissolute. Diderot plunged head-
long into love with her, as he plunged headlong
into everything. To be sure, she was abominably
extravagant and always wanting money. To
gratify her demands Diderot wrote, most charac-
teristically, an ' Essay on Merit and Virtue,' and
brought Merit and Virtue the sum he received in
payment. But Madame's love of fine clothes was
insatiable. Between a Good Friday and Easter
Day her lover composed for her the ' Philosophical
Thoughts,' which first made him famous, which
were paid the compliment of burning, and for
which his mistress received fifty louis.

The history of the inspiration of masterpieces

40 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEB

would afford a peculiarly interesting insight into
human nature. It may be set down to the credit
of Madame Puisieux (history knows of nothing
else to her credit) that her rapacity at least forced
this incorrigible ne'er-do-weel upon his destiny,
and first turned Diderot, the most deUghtful scamp
in the capital, into Diderot the hard-working
philosopher and man of genius.

Nanette came home presently, having earned
the love and admiration of the little family at
Langres, and put up with Madame Puisieux as
best she could. Other children were born to her,
and died ; only one, little Angelique, survived. Of
the quantity of Diderot's love for this child there
is no doubt ; it is only the quality that is ques-
tionable. Self-indulgent to himself, he was weakly
indulgent to her. She was apt at learning, so,
when they both felt inclined, he taught her music
and history. Later, when she was ill, he wrote
letters about her full of ardent affection ; but he
left her mother to nurse her and went off gaily to
amuse himself with his friends, and then took great
credit for having given 'orders which marked
attention and interest ' in her, before he went out
and dined with Grimm under the trees in the
Tuileries.

Of course Angelique loved the lively good-
natured father much the better of the two. Of

DIDEBOT: THE TALKEK 41

her mother the daughter herself said afterwards,
with a sad truth, that she would have had a
happier life if she could have cared less for her
husband.

However, Denis was working now, and working
meant, or should mean, ease and competence.

The ' Philosophical Thoughts ' had made men
turn and look at him. True, their audacious
freedom was not pleasing to the government ; but
what did a Diderot care for that? His ideas
rolled off his pen as the words rolled off his
tongue. ' I do not compose, I am no author,' he
wrote once. ' I read, or I converse. I ask ques-
tions, or I give answ^ers.' The lines should be
placed as a motto over each of his works. That
they are literally true accounts for all his defects
as a writer, and for all his charm.

In 1749 he happened to be talking about a cer-
tain famous operation for cataract, and afterwards
wrote down his reflections on it. To a man born
blind, atheism, said Diderot, is surely a natural
religion. He sent his ' Letter on the Blind for the
Use of Those Who See ' to the great chief of the
party of which his ' Philosophical Thoughts ' had
proclaimed himself a member. Voltaire replied
that, for his part, if he were blind, he should have
recognised a great InteUigence who provided so
many substitutes for sight; and the friendship

42 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEB

between Arouet and Denis was started with a

will.

On July 24, 1749, Diderot found himself
a prisoner in the fortress of Yincennes. He
was not wholly surprised. No literary man was
astonished at being imprisoned in those days.
Diderot was perfectly aware that since the publi-
cation of the 'Philosophical Thoughts' he had
been suspect of the police ; he was also aware that
his ' Letter on the Blind ' contained a sneer on the
subject of a fine lady, the chere amie of d'Argenson,
the War Minister. For company he had ' Para-
dise Lost' and his own buoyant temperament.
He made a pen out of a toothpick, and ink out of
the slate scraped from the side of his window,
mixed with wine; and with characteristic good-
nature wrote down this simple recipe for writing
materials on the wall of his cell for the benefit of
future sufierers.

Better than all, he was the friend of Voltaire,
and Voltaire's Madame du Chatelet was a near
relative of the governor of Vincennes. After
twenty-one days of wire-pulUng, Socrates Diderot,
as Madame du Chatelet called him, was removed,
as the fruit of her efforts, from the fortress to the
castle of Vincennes, put on parole, allowed the
society of his wife and children, with pen, ink,
and books to his heart's content. One day

DIDEROT: THE TALKER 43

Madame Puisieux came to see him — in attire too
magnificent to be entirely for the benefit of a
poor dog of a prisoner like myself, thinks Denis.
That night he climbed over the high wall of the
enceinte of the castle, and finding her, as he had
expected, amusing herself with another admirer
at Sifete, renounced her as easily and hotly as he
had fallen in love with her. He had one far more
famous visitor in Vincennes, Jean Jacques Eous-
seau. As they walked together in the wood of
Vincennes, Denis, with his overrunning fecundity
of idea, suggested to Jean Jacques, it is said, the
matter for that essay, sometimes called the ' Essay
against Civilisation,' which first made him famous.

When his imprisonment had lasted three
months Diderot, at the angry urging of the book-
sellers of Paris, was released.

In 1745 one of those booksellers, Le Breton,
had suggested to him ' the scheme of a book that
should be all books.' Enterprising England had
been first in the field. To Francis Bacon belongs
the honour of having originated the idea of an
Encyclopaedia. Chambers, an Englishman, first
worked out that idea. It was a French trans-
lation of Chambers that Le Breton took to Diderot,
and it was Diderot who breathed upon it the
breath of life.

That this knavish bookseller's choice should

44 THE FRIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

have fallen out of all men upon him, might
have inclined even so whole-hearted a sceptic as
Denis himself to believe in an Intelligence behind
the world. He was hungry and poor, and
must have work that would bring him bread.
There were indeed thousands of persons in that
position; but out of those thousands there was
only one with the hot, sanguine courage to under-
take so risky a scheme, with the ' fiery patience '
to work it in the face of overwhelming odds, and
with the exuberant genius to make it the mighty
masterpiece it became.

Diderot saw its possibilities at once. In
another second, as it were, he saw all he could
himself do, and all he could not do. He could
write about most things. He could study the
trades and industries of France, if it took him
thirty years of labour, of which the mere thought
would daunt most men; by giving their history
he could glorify for ever those peaceful arts which
make a nation truly great and happy. He could
write on Gallantry, on Genius, on Libraries, on
Anagrams. For his fertile spirit scarcely any
subject was too great or too small. Against in-
tolerance he could bring to bear ' the concentrated
energy of a profound conviction.' Eeligion itself
he could attack in so far as it interfered with
men's liberty; and miracle he must attack,

DIDEROT: THE TALKER 45

because, in the words of Voltaire, ' Men will not
cease to be persecutors till they have ceased to be
absurd.' If he had, just to appease the authori-
ties, and to give the book a chance of a hearing,
to truckle here and there to prejudice and super-
stition, well, Diderot could lie as heartily and as
cheerfully as he did all things.

But the inexact schoolboy of Harcourt College
was no mathematician, and knew his limitations.
With the freemasonry of genius he saw in a single
flashing glance that d'Alembert was the man to
share with him the parentage of this wonderful
child. He stormed the calm savant in his attic
above the glazier's shop, overwhelmed, prayed,
pressed, bewitched him, and with ' his soul in his
eyes and his lips ' woke in d'Alembert's quiet
breast an enthusiasm which was at least some
reflex of his own.

For three years the two worked night and day
at the preliminaries of their scheme. In 1750
Diderot poured out, with the warmth and glow of
a woman in love, the Prospectus and Plan of his
work. The overwhelmingness of his enthusiasm
had forced a privilege for it from the authorities.
Also in 1750 appeared d'Alembert's Preface, and
the first volume was launched on the world.

From this time until 1765 the history of
Diderot and of the Encyclopaedia is the same thing.

46 THE FBIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

For fifteen years he worked at it unremittingly
through storm and sunshine. The idea possessed
and dominated him. In a garret on the fifth floor
in his lodging in the Eue Taranne, wrapped in
an old dressing-gown, with wild hair, bare neck,
and bent back, the message he must deliver
through the Encyclopaedia bubbled into his heart
and went straight from his heart to his pen.

' This thing will surely produce a great revo-
lution in the human mind,' he said of it in passion-
ate exultation : ' We shall have served humanity.'
For this Diderot, who disbelieved so loudly and
truculently in God, believed hopefully in the im-
provement of human kind, and had for the race
so vast and so generous a pity that he sacrificed
to it the coarse pleasures his coarse nature loved,
his time, his peace, his worldly advancement, his
safety, and his friend.

In 1762 a Eoyal Edict of matchless imbecility
suppressed the first two volumes of the book, at
the same time begging its promoters to continue
to bring out others! Every year a volume ap-
peared until 1757. The success of the thing was
prodigious, and with reason, for it said what, so
far, men had only dared to think. It gave the
history, quite innocently, of the taxes — of gabelle,
of taille, of corvee — and they stood 'damned to
everlasting fame ; ' it showed the infamous abuses

DIDEROT: THE TALKER 47

of the game-laws ; it manifested the miracles of
science. As by a magnet the genius of Diderot
had drawn to him, as contributors, all the genius
of France ; while always at his side, co-editing,
restraining his imprudence, yet working as he
worked himself, was d'Alembert.

And then, in 1759, came the great suspen-
sion. D'Alembert had written his famous article
' Geneva,' and that mad emotionalist, Jean Jacques
Eousseau, in the most famous treachery in the
history of literature, turned on the philosophic
party in his Letter to d'Alembert 'On Plays.'
The authorities of France united with insulted
Calvinism and with Eousseau, and declared the
Encyclopsedia accursed and forbidden. That
would have been bad enough; but there was
yet one thing worse. Beaten down by storm and
insult, d'Alembert fell back from the fray and left
Diderot to fight the battle alone.

He started up in a second, raging and cursing,
and went out with his life in his hand. Seizing
his pen, he slashed, hewed, hacked, with that
reckless weapon on every side. Yincennes and
the Bastille loomed ominously ; he was never sure
one day, says his daughter, of being allowed to
continue the next ; but he went on. The authori-
ties might burn, but they could not destroy ; they
might prohibit, but they could not daunt a Diderot.

48 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

In 1764, despite galleys and bonfires, kings,
ministers, and lettres de cachet, the last ten volumes
were ready to appear in a single issue and to
crown his life's labour, when fate struck him a
last crushing blow. When the manuscript of the
articles had been burnt he discovered that the false
Le Breton, fearing for his own safety, had cut out
all such passages as he thought might endanger it ;
and had thus mutilated and ruined the ten volumes
past recall.

Diderot burst, literally, into tears of rage.
Despair and frenzy seized him. Was this to be
the end ? Not while he had breath in his body !
He attacked Le Breton with an unclean fury not
often matched, and in 1765 the volumes appeared,
as whole as his talent and energy could make
them. It was Diderot who said that if he must
choose between Eacine, bad husband, father,
and friend, but sublime poet; and Eacine, good
husband, father, and friend, but dull ordinary
man, he would choose the first. ' Of the wicked
Eacine, what remains ? Nothing. Of Eacine, the
man of genius ? The work is eternal.' When one
considers his Herculean labours for the Encyclo-
paedia, one is almost tempted to judge him as he
judged Eacine.

All the time, too, he was busy in many other
ways. There has surely never been such a good-

DIDEEOT: THE TALKER 49

natured man of letters. The study door in the
attic was open not only to all his friends, but
to all the Grub Street vagrants and parasites
of Paris. Diderot purified his friend d'Hol-
bach's German-French and profusely helped his
dearest Grimm in the ' Literary Correspondence ; '
he corrected proofs for Helvetius, Eaynal, and
Galiani, gave lessons in metaphysics to a German
princess, and was, for himself, not only an encyclo-
paedist, but a novelist, an art-critic, and a play-
wright. He also wrote dedicatory epistles for needy
musicians, ' reconciled brothers, settled lawsuits,
solicited pensions.' He planned a comedy for an
unsuccessful dramatic author, and, in roars of
laughter, indited an advertisement of a hair-wash
to oblige an illiterate hairdresser. The story has
been told often, but still bears telling afresh, of
the young man who came to him with a personal
satire against Diderot himself. ' I thought,' says
the satirist, ' you would give me a few crowns to
suppress it.' ' I can do better for you than that,'
says Diderot, not in the least annoyed. ' Dedicate
it to the brother of the Duke of Orleans, who
hates me; take it to him and he will give you
assistance.' ' But I do not know the Prince.' ' Sit
down, and I will write the dedication for 3^ou.'
He did, and so ably, that the satirist obtained a
handsome sum.

E

50 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

Another day he composed for the benefit of a
woman, who had been deserted by the Due de la
Vrilliere, a most touching appeal to the Duke's
feelings. ' While I lived in the light of your love,
I did not ask your pity. But of all your passion
there only remains to me your portrait — and that
I must sell to-morrow for bread.' The Duke sent
her fifty louis.

It is hardly necessary to say that Diderot's
friends availed themselves as freely of his purse as
of his brains. In return for his mighty expendi-
ture of time, talent, and energy for the Encyclo-
pedia he never received more than the princely
sum of one hundred and thirty pounds a year. As
he was the sort of person who always took a
carriage if he wanted one, who had a pretty taste
in miniatures and ohjets d'art which he found it
positively imperative to gratify, as he loved high
play and always lost — as, in brief, he could never
deny himself or anybody else anything — it was
physically impossible he should ever be solvent.

One graceless hanger-on turned back as he was
leaving him one day. ' M. Diderot, do you know
any natural history?' 'Well,' says Diderot,
< enough to tell a pigeon from a humming-bird.'
' Have you ever heard of the Formica leo ? It is a
very busy little creature ; it burrows a hole in the
earth like a funnel, covers the surface with a fine

DIDEROT: THE TALKER 61

sand, attracts a number of stupid insects to it,
takes them, sucks them dry, and says, " M. Diderot,
I have the honour to wish you a very good morn-
ing." ' It may be said of Diderot that he could
love, but not respect ; and that is the inevitable
attitude one takes towards himself.

In 1755, during his work at the Encyclopgedia
and for those innumerable idle persons who had
much better have worked for themselves, poor
Nanette went on a second fatal visit to Langres
and gave her husband the opportunity of falling
in love with Mademoiselle Volland, and starting
a memorable correspondence.

Sophie Volland was a rather elderly young
lady, with spectacles, and a good deal of real
cleverness and erudition. Whether Diderot, who
was now a man of forty-two, was ever literally in
love with her, or whether he was ' less than lover
but more than friend,' remains uncertain. His
letters to her are warmly interesting, frank,
natural, spontaneous, with many passages of ex-
quisite beauty and thoughtfulness. There is but
one fault — that fatal fault without which Diderot
would not have been Diderot at all but some
loftier man — his irrepressible indecency.

He had much to tell Mademoiselle. The words
seem to trip over each other in his anxiety to
show her all he had done and felt. He was now

B 2

52 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

famous. The Encyclopasdia had thrown open to
him, cutler's son though he was, the doors of the
salons \ a great quarrel he had with Eousseau in
1757 — the dingy details of which there is neither
interest nor profit in recalling — made him the
talk of the cafes.

But this loud, explosive Denis was scarcely a
social light. He said himself that he only liked
company in which he could say anything. And
what Diderot meant by anytJiing was considered
indecorous even in that freest of all free-spoken
ages. Good old Madame Geoffrin lost her patience
with him, not only for his licence, but for talking
so movingly about duty and neglecting all his
own. She was not going to ignore his Mademoiselle
VoUand. She treated him ' like a beast,' he said,
and advised his wife to do the same. As for
Madame Necker — 'qui raffole de moi,' said the
complacent Denis himself — she too 'judged great
men by their conduct and not by their talents,'
which was very awkward indeed for a Diderot.

There was a third house where he visited much
more often and got on much better ; but that was
not because Madame d'Epinay was its mistress,
but because Grimm was its presiding genius. His
friendship with the cool German had a senti-
mentality and a demonstrativeness which English-
men find hard to forgive, but which were sincere

DIDEEOT: THE TALKER 53

enough not the less. Grimm took complete con-
trol of his impulsive, generous colleague. Because
Grimm bade him, Denis began in 1759 writing his
'Salons,' or criticisms on pictures, and became
'the first critic in France who made criticism
eloquent;' while, when Grimm was away, almost
all the work of the 'Literary Correspondence'
fell on Diderot's too good-natured shoulders.
When his dearest friend was not there, Diderot's
steps turned much less often towards Madame
d'Epinay's house.

In 1759 he first spent an autumn at the only
place at which he was perfectly at home, and
where he soon became a regular visitor.

Baron d'Holbach was first of all 'an atheist,
and not ashamed ; ' but he was also very rich,
very liberal, very hospitable, with a charming
country house at Grandval, near Charenton, where
he entertained the free-thinkers of all nations, and
where his table was equally celebrated for its cook
and its conversation. The former was so good
that Denis was always over-eating himself; and
the latter was, in a moral sense, so bad that he
enjoyed it to the utmost.

The Grandval household was fettered by none
of the tiresome rules which are apt to make visit-
ing, when one has passed the easily adaptable
season of youth, a hazardous experiment. The

54 THE FRIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

hostess 'fulfilled no duties and exacted none.'
The visitors were as free as in their own homes.
Diderot would get up at six, take a cup of tea,
fling open the windows to admit the air and sun-
shine, and then fall to work. At two came dinner.
The house was always full of people who met now
for the first time. In that free style, glowing with
life and colour, Diderot recorded to Mademoiselle
Volland the Eabelaisian conversation which made
these dinners so long, and, to him, so delightful.
He reported to her verbatim the amazing liberty
of speech which distinguished them, just as he
reported to her in minutest detail the indigestions
for which the too excellent cook was responsible.

The unbridled talk of d'Holbach's mother-in-
law continually set the table in a roar. Diderot
himself was at his best — full of bonhomie and joie-
de-vivre — laughing one minute and crying the next,
warm in generous pity for sorrow, quick to be
irritated or appeased, pouring out torrents of
splendid ideas and then of grossest ribaldry, his
mouth speaking always from the fulness of his
heart, utterly indiscreet, brilliant, ingenuous, de-
lightful; an orator 'drunk with the exuberance
of his own verbosity,' who could argue that black
was white, and then that white was black again,
and whose seduction and danger lay in the fact
that he always fully believed both impossibilities

DIDEEOT: THE TALKEB 65

himself. No subject that was started found him
cool or neutral. 'He is too hot an oven,' said
Voltaire; ' everything gets burnt in him/

When the dinner was over he would thrust his
arm through his host's and walk in the garden
with him. He at least did his best to imbue the
dogmatic atheism of d'Holbach with luxuriance
and warmth. At seven they came back to the
house, and supper was followed by picquet and
by talk till they went to bed.

Among many other visitors whom Diderot met
while he was what he called 'veuf at Grandval
were at least four Englishmen — Sterne, Wilkes,
Garrick, and Hume.

Diderot has been well called the most English
of the Frenchmen of the eighteenth century. He
began his literary career by making translations
from our language. In a passion of admiration he
had fallen at the feet of the ' divine Eichardson,'
and imitated 'Pamela' in a very bad novel of
his own, ' The Nun ; ' in another, ' Jacques, the
Fatalist,' he tried to accustom France to romance
in the style of Sterne. He had taught his fellow-
citizens, he said, to read and to esteem Bacon. He
was familiar with the works of Pope, Chaucer,
Tillotson, and Locke ; and he has left a noble and
famous criticism upon Shakespeare: 'He is like
the St. Christopher of Notre-Dame, an unshapen

56 THE FRIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

Colossus, rudely carven, but beneath whose legs
we can all walk without our brows touching
him;

To Garrick, Diderot paid exaggerated homage,
and went into raptures over the wonderful play of
his face. He admired Wilkes's morals as well as
his mind, and in 1768 wrote him a flattering letter.
As for Hume, he liked the delightful Diderot better
than any other philosopher he met in France. It
is Diderot who tells the story of Hume saying at
d'Holbach's table, ' I do not believe there is such
a thing as an atheist ; I have never seen one,' and of
d'Holbach's replying, ' Then you have been a little
unfortunate ; you are sitting now with seventeen.'
Sterne, whose ' Tristram Shandy ' was delighting
France in general and Diderot in particular when
its author was at Grandval, on his return home
sent Denis English books.

In 1761 Diderot produced a play. ' The Father
of the Family ' is, it must be confessed, a sad bore
with his lachrymose moralities ; but he is exhila-
rating compared to ' The Natural Son,' Diderot's
second play, which was acted in 1771. The uni-
versal Denis was no playwright.

In 1772 he published the ten volumes of plates
which he had laboriously prepared to supplement
the text of the Encyclopasdia ; and in May 1773,
when he was sixty years old, he visited Catherine
the Great.

DIDEEOT: THE TALKEJl 67

He had had relations with her for some years.
One fine day, in 1765, it had suddenly occurred
to him that his dearest Angelique, over whom he
had poured such streams of paternal sentiment,
would have positively no dot. Her fond, impro-
vident father had, of course, never attempted to
save anything for her, and, if he knew his own
disposition, must have known too he never would
save anything. The only thing he had of value
in the w^orld, besides his head, was his library.
Catherine the Great was a magnificent patron of
letters ; and Diderot was her especial protege. He
would sell his books to her ! She delightedly
accepted the offer. She gave him for them a
sum equal to about seven hundred pounds, and
appointed him her librarian at a salary of a
thousand livres a year, fifty years' payment being
made in advance.

For the first time in his history Diderot found
himself rich. When a patron so munificent asked
him to visit her, how could he decline ? All the
Encyclopgedists were her warm admirers ; she
herself used to say modestly that Yoltaire had
made her the fashion. Denis hated long journeys
and loved Paris, but go he must. He left France
on May 10, 1773. He stopped at The Hague—
where he characteristically admired the beauty of
the women, and the turbot — and at last arrived at
St. Petersburg.

68 THE FBIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

For a monarch who complained that she might
have been the head of Medusa — everyone turned
to stone when she entered the room — Diderot
must have been a singularly refreshing guest.
It was one of the most charming traits in his
character that he respected persons no more than
a child does, or a dog. All etiquette fled before
his breezy, impulsive personality. The very
clothes he arrived in were so shabby, her Majesty
had to present him immediately with a court suit.
He was with her every afternoon. He said what
he liked, and as much as he liked, which was a
very great deal. In the heat and excitement of
his arguments he would hammer the Imperial
knees black and blue, till the Empress had to put
a table in front of her for safety. If he ever did
recollect her august position, ' Allons ! ' she would
cry ; ' between men everything is permissible.' He
evolved the most magnificent, impossible schemes
for the government of her empire — which would
have upset it in a week if she had tried them, said
she. During his stay, his dearest Grimm was also
a guest. In March 1774, Denis left ; and by the
time he reached Paris again, was persuaded that
he had enjoyed himself very much indeed.

Four years later, in 1778, he first saw in the
flesh the great elder brother of his order, the
master-worker in the temple slowly lifting its

DIDEROT: THE TALKER 69

gorgeous towers towards the light — Voltaire. They
had not always agreed on paper : their goal had
been the same, but not the road to it. ' But we
are not so far apart,' says old Voltaire ; ' we only
want a conversation to understand each other/
Accordingly, when he came on his last triumph
to the capital, Diderot went to see him in the
Villettes' house on what is now the Quai Voltaire.
Few details of their interviews have been pre-
served ; but it is said that they discussed Shake-
speare, and that when Diderot left, Voltaire said
of him : ' He is clever, but he lacks one very
necessary talent — that of dialogue.' On his part,
Diderot compared Voltaire to a haunted castle
falling into ruins — 'but one can easily see it is
still inhabited by a magician.'

Voltaire died. Diderot was himself growing
old ; he had acquired, he thought in Eussia, the
seeds of a lung disease. Angelique married a
M. de Vandeul, on the strength of the dot pro-
vided by the sale of the library. Madame Diderot,
poor soul, had become not a little worried and
embittered. It is the careless who make the care
worn, and Diderot was almost to the last the
engaging, light-hearted scamp whose troubles are
always flung on to some patient scapegoat.

In 1783, or 1784, the death of Mademoiselle
VoUand gave him a real grief. Twenty years before

60 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

lie had written to her with an exquisite eloquence
of the calm and gentle approach of the great rest,
Death : ' One longs for the end of life as, after
hard toil, one longs for the end of the day.' He
proved in himself the truth of his own words.
He had not even a hope of the immortality of the
soul ; but he had worked hard, the evening was
come, and he was weary. He was still working —
writing the ' Life of Seneca.' He was still his all
too lovable, spontaneous self, talking with that
marvellous inspiration of which the best of his
books can convey little idea.

A fortnight before he died he moved into a
new home, given him by Catherine the Great, in
the Eue Eichelieu, opposite the birthplace of
Moliere and almost next door to the house where
Voltaire had lived with Madame du Chatelet, and
after her death. The cure of Saint- Sulpice came
to see him, and suggested that a retractation of
his sceptical opinions would produce good effect.
' I dare say it would,' said Denis, ' but it would
be a most impudent lie.' In his last conversation
Madame de Vandeul records that she heard him
say : ' The first step towards philosophy is un-
behef.'

The end came very suddenly. On the last day
of July 1784, he was supping with his wife and
daughter, and at dessert took an apricot. Nanette

DIDEEOT: THE TALKER 61

gently remonstrated. 'Mais que diable de mal
veux-tu que cela me fasse ? ' he cried. They were
his last words and perfectly characteristic. He
died as he sat, a few minutes later.

If to be great means to be good, then Denis
Diderot was a little man. But if to be great means
to do great things in the teeth of great obstacles,
then none can refuse him a place in the temple of
the Immortals.

His fiction, taken from rottenness, has returned
to it, and is justly dead. His plays were damned
on their appearance. His moving criticisms on
art and the drama, his satirical dialogue, ' Eameau's
Nephew ' — nearly all the printed talk of this most
matchless of all talkers — are rarely read. His
letters to Mademoiselle Yolland will last so long as
the proper study of mankind is man. But it is as
the father of the Encyclopaedia that Denis Diderot
merits eternal recognition. Guilty as he was in
almost every relation of life towards the individual,
for mankind, in the teeth of danger and of infi-
delity, at the ill-paid sacrifice of the best years of
his exuberant life, he produced that book which
first levelled a free path to knowledge and enfran-
chised the soul of his generation.

62 THE FRIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

III
GALIANI: THE WIT.

' How can you say I do not know Galiani ? ' wrote
Voltaire to Madame d'fipinay. ' I have read him ;
therefore I have seen him.'

Of that Brotherhood of Progress, united by a
love, sometimes for each other and always for man-
kind, if Voltaire was the leader, and d'Alembert the
thinker, Galiani was certainly the wit. In his own
day he was celebrated as the man who made Paris
laugh — and ponder — by his famous ' Dialogues on
Corn ; ' and in our day he is remembered as the
gay little buffoon of the eighteenth century and the
author of a most amusing correspondence. Voltaire
went on to declare the Abbe must be as much like
his Dialogues as two jets of fire are like each
other ; and Diderot swore that if he had written
a word of the book, he must have written it
exactly as it was.

Light, sparkUng, irresponsible, like the bril-
liant babble of some precocious child, not in the

a!y^l^ — '

THE ABBE FERDINAND GALIANI,
From a Print.

I ^'^ The "r^

GALIANI: THE WIT 63

least hampered by respect for the convenances^ as
quick and flashing as sunshine on diamonds, as
bubbling and spontaneous as a dancing little
mountain torrent, perfectly free from the bitter-
ness, the malignity, and the sarcasm which make
Voltaire's jests so terrible — the talk and the writ-
ing of Galiani are alike unique. The ' dear little
Abbe ' of the women, with his dwarfs figure and
his great head, his crafty Italian brain to conceive
a brilliant scheme and his easy flow of wit to pre-
sent it to his world, stands out alone against the
horizon of the eighteenth century.

Ferdinand Galiani first saw the light at Chieti,
in Abruzzo, on December 2, 1728. He was born
with a silver spoon in his mouth, in two senses
at least. His father was Eoyal Auditor in one
of the provinces of the Neapolitan Government;
and his uncle was Monseigneur Celestin Galiani,
first chaplain to the King of Naples, and a most
wealthy, learned, and enlightened churchman.

Little Ferdinand was eight when he was sent to
be educated, with his elder brother, Bernard, under
this uncle's supervision at Naples. For a time the
two children were taught at the convent of the
Celestins, as Monseigneur was in Eome, nego-
tiating a peace on behalf of the King of the Two
Sicilies. When he returned, he took the boys
back to his own palace and gave them the best

64 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

and the most delightful of all forms of learning, the
society of clever people. The visitors soon recog-
nised that the way to the uncle's heart was through
the precocious brain of the little nephew — that to
teach Ferdinand was to delight Monseigneur.
Whatever brother Bernard may have been,
Ferdinand was surely the aptest and sharpest of
infant prodigies. He heard discussed around him
antiquarianism, history, literature, commerce ; and
not one seed of information fell on barren ground.
Many years after Grimm declared that there was
only one man in Paris who really knew Latin,
and he was the Abbe Galiani.

He was still a mere boy when he represented
Bernard at a meeting of the Academy of Naples
and read an article on the Immaculate Conception.
The worthy Academicians, naturally shocked at
such a little creature attempting a subject so
serious, forbade him to read it. 'Very well,'
thinks young Ferdinand, ' I can wait.' The exe-
cutioner of Naples died soon after. The Academy
was famous for its eloges funebres. And behold,
there appears, in wicked and most unmistakable
travesty of the Academical funeral orations, the
eloge of the executioner ! The Academy was very
indignant, the world very much amused, and
Galiani had made his bow to the public in the
role he was never to relinquish. He confessed all

GALIANI: THE WIT 65

to the First Minister, Tanucci. Tanucci intro-
duced him to the King and Queen of Naples, who
were delighted, and then appeased the Academy
by condemning the delinquent to ten days' spiritual
exercises in a neighbouring convent.

At sixteen the boy was already an ardent Poli-
tical Economist. As England was the country
where that science was brought to perfection,
he learnt English, translated Locke's 'Essay on
Money,' and set to work to write one himself.
All the time he was studying diligently the ancient
navigation, peoples, and commerce of the Mediter-
ranean, throwing off a satire here, a mocking set
of verses there, and cultivating that pretty talent
for epigram and story-telling.

When ' Money ' was finished, he read it to
Monseigneur, without mentioning its authorship.
' Why do not yoii give your mind to serious works
such as that ? ' said the King's chaplain, and
praised the thing extravagantly. When Galiani
told his secret, Monseigneur was so delighted that
he at once set to work at Court to procure this
promising nephew something really worth having.
At two-and -twenty years old, having never studied
theology and having taken minor orders only, and
with the sole object of obtaining these emoluments,
Galiani found himself the possessor of the benefice
of Centola and the abbey of Saint-Laurent, while

66 THE FBIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

a dispensation from Eome gave him the title of
Monseigneur and the honour of the mitre. Soon
after, the admiring Court of Naples also presented
him with the rich abbey of Saint Catherine of
Celano.

The wonder is, not that Galiani writhed with
laughter (like the little Punchinello his friends
dubbed him) when he alluded to the religion of
his fathers, but that to the end of his days he saw
in that religion, beneath its shameless venality and
its hideous moral corruptions, some saving truth
to bless and comfort man's soul. When all Paris
laughed at the credulity of Madame Geoffrin, whose
death was said to have been brought about from
over-devotion to her religious duties, it was Galiani
who wrote that he considered that unbelief was
' the greatest effort the mind of man could make
against his natural instincts and wishes. ... As
the soul grows old, belief reappears.' Unlike
nearly all his philosophic friends, if his own illu-
sions were few, he was careful to leave undisturbed
those of happier people.

In respect to the emoluments he received from
Eome, and on which he fattened all his life, it may
be justly said that he took them as a man takes a
fortune out of a business he knows to be rotten,
congratulating himself on his own perspicacity,
and believing that beneath the rottenness there

GALIANI: THE WIT 67

still lies the making of a true and honest enter-
prise.

The Neapolitan Government having adopted
all the ideas suggested in ' Money,' the fortunate
young gentleman who had written it started off
in excellent spirits, in November 1751, for Eome,
Florence, and Venice. The Pope, and all the
grandees, savants^ and litterateurs in Italy petted
and made much of the agreeable little prodigy.

In June 1753 his uncle, Celestin, died, leaving
Ferdinand his fortune. Galiani still remained in
Naples, the spirit and the delight of the brilliant
society that Monseigneur had gathered about him.
But there was never any time in his life when it
was enough for this wit to be wit only. He said
of himself that he had all the vices, and his friends
declared he had all the tastes. The friends were
right. He soon began to make a collection of the
stones thrown up by Vesuvius, classified them,
wrote a beautiful dissertation on them, and sent
them to the Pope with the inscription. Holy Father,
command that these stones he made bread. Benedict
the Fourteenth was a comfortable person who
loved a joke and thought it worth its reward.
He replied by giving the little Abb^ yet another
benefice, Amalfi, worth three hundred ducats.
Then, of course, the Geological Academy of
Herculaneum must do something more for such a

It 2

'<^ OF THE J

UNIVERSiTY .

68 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

lively geologist than merely make him a member
of its body : it presented him with a pension.

In 1758 this spoilt child of fortune had the
honour of composing Pope Benedict's funeral
oration. Then he was made Chancellor to the
King, and, in 1759, Secretary to the Embassy in
Paris.

It was the turning-point of his life, and the
greatest event of his history. But for that
appointment, he might have been nothing, after
all, but some brilliant little local light, with his
sparkling Southern talents only employed for the
advantage of Italy and certainly never heard of
beyond her borders. To it he owed all his fame
and the gayest and most successful epoch in his
existence. To it the world owes its picture of the
man himself, the ' Dialogues on Corn,' and the
Correspondence with Madame d'fipinay.

Galiani was at first pleased to go. But he was
thirty years old, and had never yet been out of his
own country. She had done generously by him,
and he was extremely rich. On the other hand,
the secretaryship involved further large emolu-
ments, and Galiani was not one of those rare, wise
people who know how easy it is to be rich enough ;
he had not learned from the possession of money
how very little it can buy. Paris was then not
only the capital of France, but the social capital of

GALIANI: THE WIT 69

the world. She was at the height of her ancient
glory. Ee volutions had not shattered her splendid
buildings or the delicate fabric of the most easy,
polished, accomplished society under heaven. She
was the finishing school of Europe. Her language
was the language of many Courts, of Frederick
of Prussia, and of the letters of Catherine the
Great. From her printing presses she poured
forth, almost daily, masterpieces of literature, or
pamphlets which were to change dynasties and
shake kingdoms. On her throne sat Louis the
Fifteenth, as rotten as the society of which he was
the head, but, like that society, with a rottenness
covered by a magnificence which awed investiga-
tion into silence. Choiseul was the minister in
name, and Madame de Pompadour in reality ; and
over the salons^ then in the height of their power
and distinction, presided women ' who in the de-
cline of their beauty revealed the dawn of their
intelligence.'

Such a world should have pleased Galiani, or
any happy Southerner who loved to bask in the
warmth of prosperity and shrug his shoulders at
the possibility of future disaster. But at first it
did not. He was cold and homesick. His health,
he wrote, would certainly not survive the unequal
chmate. Foreign customs, bad air, detestable
water, everything here is noxious to my Italian

70 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

temperament ! Then Choiseul received the petted
wit of the Neapohtan parties coldly, nonchalantly,
indifferently. And Versailles — Versailles was yet
more objectionable. When Galiani was presented
there in June 1760. with his four-and-a-half-
foot figure overladen with the ridiculous gala
dress of the period, the men burst into open
laughter and the women sneered behind their fans.
Why should that cruel age, which had no com-
passion on the helplessness of little children, on
poverty, on misfortune, on weakness, and which,
when it did not mock at moral suffering, fled from
it as from a disease one might catch — why should
such an age pity the sensibilities of a deformed
little foreigner, an absurd dwarf of an abbe, whom
no one in Paris (which is to say the world) had
ever heard of before ?

Galiani was more than a match for the
laughers. ' Sire,' he said to the King, ' you now
see only a sample of the secretary ; the secretary
will arrive later.' The King was delighted ; but
the secretary retired with that cruel laughter
ringing in his heart. For a whole year he
pleaded passionately for his recall. He wrote
bitterly of the French as ' a mobile and super-
ficial race full at once of passion and lightness.
. . . My clothes, my character, my way of
thinking, and all my natural defects will always

GALIANI: THE WIT 71

make me insupportable to this people and to
myself.'

From being the most popular and successful
man in Naples, he was in Paris the insignificant
secretary at whom, as he passed by, men mocked
with the tongue in the cheek. They did not
indeed mock for ever. His own sharp tongue was
bound to win him respect and reputation. First
it was a jest uttered here ; and then a story, with
his own inimitable gesticulation, told there. This
little secretary is going to be amusing ! Further,
he was always accompanied by his dme damnee^
the most intelligent of monkeys, who was only
something less entertaining than his master. The
master, moreover, could play on the clavecin, and
sing to it, wonderfully. Even for the Parisians
of that day his conversation was free, naif, un-
hampered. The man has ideas, as we all have, on
the liberty of the Press and the Masses, on the
Deluge that is coming after us ; only he can put
those ideas so that the expression reads like a
romance or sounds like a jest !

Then he was introduced to Baron Gleichen,
and to Grimm, the first journalist in Europe.
Grimm made him known to Madame d'Epinay ;
and his acquaintance with her, with Madame
Necker, with Madame Geoffrin, and with Made-
moiselle de Lespinasse, implied an introduction to

72 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

the society of all witty Paris, and of all travelling
England. He became the friend of d'Alembert,
who had just published his ' Elements of Philo-
sophy,' of Diderot, of d'Holbach, of Helvetius, of
Morellet, and of Marmontel. He met that magni-
ficent icicle, Saint Lambert, still writing his
' Seasons ' and stealing Madame d'Houdetot from
Eousseau. He knew Suard, Thomas, Eaynal, and
that picturesque and ill-fated young Spaniard, the
Marquis de Mora.

In a word, by 1760, Galiani was launched —
the gayest little skiff that ever danced into a
summer sea. The Parisian climate improved in
the twinkling of an eye ; the bad water became
drinkable ; the light and fickle people turned into
one ' loving and worthy to be loved.' Some fool
of a wit, who had declared that the Abbe would
never succeed at Court because he thought too
loud and spoke too low, must needs eat his words.
However low he spoke now, the audience always
heard. They expected a hon mot or a naivete,
every time he opened his mouth, and he did
not disappoint them. Instead of a poor little
dwarf from that God-forsaken Naples, the secre-
tary became 'the prettiest little Harlequin Italy
has produced,' ' the incomparable Abbe,' ^ the
head of Machiavelli,' ' Machiavellino,' ' ce drole de
Napolitain,' ' Plato, with the verve and gestures

GALIANI: THE WIT 73

of Harlequin.' In a word, lie was the mode. The
women raved about him — he understood them so
well ! — and fought among each other for his pre-
sence at their parties. If Choiseul remained cold,
his Duchess — * the gentlest, amiablest, civil little
creature that ever came out of a fairy egg,'
said Horace Walpole — was as fond of her Abbe
as were her society sisters. Galiani was asked
everywhere and went everywhere. He had found
his true element at last. How tame and provincial
the Neapolitan parties looked now ! How dull
and restricted were ambitions that limited one to
Italy! Paris was the theatre of Europe — with
a crowded audience of all nations watching, half
laughing and half afraid, the next move in her
breathless tragi-comedy. There was hardly ever a
more effective actor on her boards than this buffoon,
this keen-set httle wit, this jester, with here and
there, now and then, as if by accident, some
poignant meaning, some thrilling prophecy beating
beneath his jests, and startling his hearers to a
brief and sudden gravity.

In spite of the facts that Galiani was busy
learning French, making a Commentary on Horace,
and working at the duties of his secretaryship with
an entirely superfluous energy, his social life in
Paris began early in the morning. It was his
custom to stop in bed till the middle of the day

74 THE FRIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

and thus receive his friends; tenir son lit de justice,
he called it. Sometimes he would wrap himself
up, and sit on the bed with his little legs crossed
like a tailor. He talked a great deal — a great
deal too much, said some people; he had no
'flashes of silence.' When his friend began
speaking he waited impatiently to leap into the
conversation himself; and when the friend at-
tempted to make himself heard, ' Let me finish,'
says the Abbe, ' you will have plenty of time to
answer me back ; ' but he took good care that that
time never came. ' Paris,' he used to say regret-
fully in later years, ' is the only place where they
listened to me ; ' and one of his biographers declares
pathetically that he died of ' paroles rentrees et non
ecoutees.'

No wonder he was so full of life in the
French capital. The talk of the morning was
always followed by more talk in the evening.
On Thursdays, it was Madame Geoffrin's turn
to receive. This 'nurse of philosophy,' this
calm, placid, old hostess with her quiet, ortho-
dox principles, and her prudent, regular life,
could no more help loving this little libertine
of a wit than could her lighter sisters. He
was 'her abbe, her little abbe, her petite chose.'
As for him, he loved her without after-thought,
and with the whole-hearted impetuosity of his

GALIANI: THE WIT 75

nature. He declared that she inspired him with
wit, that her arm-chairs were the tripods of
Apollo and he was the Sibyl. Her very primness
egged him on to more reckless stories, to wilder
buffooneries ; but he went away laughing at her
and loving her and respecting her, and did all to
the end of his life.

There was another woman whom he also
respected, but whom he did not love. With her
one intense, overmastering passion centred on her
husband, Madame Necker was for ever the Cal-
vinist pastor's daughter, ' rigid, frigid, and good.'
One female friend spoke of her acrimoniously as
' soaked in starch,' and Galiani him self complained,
without by any means intending a compliment, of
her 'cold demeanour of decency.' How such a
ribald, rollicking person as himself ever gained
admittance to a Puritan household would be a
wonder in our day ; but in that day if, as Galiani
himself wrote, one was only to know virtu-
ous people, the number of one's friends would
be alarmingly reduced. And — and — Madame
Necker 's salon was not for herself or her acquaint-
ance ; it was for her husband. Across the dinner-
table on those Fridays the lively and daring
Italian would defend with his rapid, reckless
tongue the causes which his heavy host could only
maintain with his pen. Leaning after dinner

76 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

against the chimney corner, with his sparkling eyes
lighting up his keen pale face, with his dwarfs
figure dressed always with an infinite neatness
and nicety, Galiani would fight single-handed that
battle against the Economists, his own and Necker's
special antipathies, and fight it, too, against such
men as Thomas, Eaynal, and Morellet. No wonder
Madame Necker overlooked her visitor's pecca-
dilloes. The little Abbe had such a resistless
torrent of logic ! If the other side had reason
in its favour, no one had a chance of advancing
that reason. Directly anyone else began to talk,
Galiani slipped away, and, there being no Opposi-
tion, Parliament rose.

After the orthodoxy of Madame GeofFrin and
the decency of Madame Necker, the gatherings
of Baron d'Holbach at Grandval might have been
supposed to have afibrded Galiani an agreeable
contrast. Not content with disbelieving himself,
the Baron's scepticism was of that eager and
proselytising kind which must for ever be destroy-
ing the faith of others. He delivered himself of
it with a daring irreverence that made even the
Italian Abbe shudder, though, heaven knows I he
talked freely enough himself, and had listened to
free enough talk from others. He was here, as
he had been at the Neckers', almost alone in the
Opposition. It delighted him to lean over the

GALIANI: THE WIT 77

table and assure these persons who were for push-
ing throne and Church, King and priest, down the
abyss as fast as might be, that he loved despotism,
' bien cru, bien vert, bien ^pre.' It was Galiani
who alone perceived that these wild theories, con-
ceived in salons^ must, when translated into deeds,
first of all destroy those who conceived them, and
that a change in the Constitution, which might be
a very beautiful thing when done, was a very vile
thing in the doing. ' It worries two or three
generations,' he said, ' and only obliges posterity.
Posterity is merely a possibility, and we are reali-
ties. And why should realities put themselves
out for possibilities ? '

One day at d'Holbach's, the conversation on
the Deity became so outrageous, that, with every
man's hand against him, Galiani rose. ' Messieurs
les Philosophes,' says he, ' you go too fast. If I
were the Pope, I should hand you over to the
Inquisition ; if the King, to the Bastille. But as I
have the good luck to be neither, I shall come to
dinner next Thursday, and you shall listen to me
as patiently as I have listened to you.'

Thursday came. After dinner and coffee, the
Abbe takes an armchair, crosses his legs, removes
his wig (the night being sultry), and, with those
lively gesticulations which he can no more help
than he can help breathing, tells a story.

78 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

'Please suppose, gentlemen, that one of you,
who is the most convinced that this world is the
result of chance, happens to be playing at dice,
not in a gambling hell but in one of the best
houses in Paris. His adversary, casting one, two,
three, four — many times — always throws number
six. After the game has gone on a little while,
my friend Diderot, we will say, who is losing his
money, will certainty call out, "The dice are
cogged ! This is some swindlers' den ! " What,
philosopher, what ? Because ten or twelve throws
of dice come out of the box so that you lose half a
dozen francs, you are firmly convinced that this is
the result of a clever design, an artificial combi-
nation, a complicated roguery ; and yet, seeing in
the universe a mighty number of combinations a
thousand times more difficult, more complicated,
and more useful, you do not suspect that Nature's
dice are also cogged, and that above there is a
great Arranger ? '

It was a most happy illustration, if not a
convincing argument. But the age which was
swayed by the eloquence of Eousseau always pre-
ferred an example to a reason: while the class
who laughed later at 'The Marriage of Figaro'
might certainly be counted on to enjoy a joke
against itself.

There was a fourth salon where Galiani

GALIANI: THE WIT 79

was much more at home than at Grandval,
or under the prim wings of Madame Necker or
the motherly feathers of Madame GeoiFrin. At
Madame d'Epinay's alone, he was perfectly
natural, his rollicking, buffooning, all-daring self,
able, as only a Southerner is able, to make him-
self entirely ridiculous without being at all con-
temptible.

Madame d'Epinay was that clever wife of a
ruined Farmer General, who had been petted by
Eousseau, and played with by Voltaire. Madame
d'Houdetot was her sister-in-law ; Diderot was her
constant associate ; Grimm was her lover ; and
Galiani became, and remained for twenty years,
her most sincere and admiring friend.

A Platonic friendship is perhaps only possible
when one or other of the Platonists is in love with
a third person. Grimm, with his well-regulated
head and heart, was not only perfectly able to
keep a fickle woman true to him, but himself
to retain an honest regard for the Abbe and to
use his opinions and his wit for the ' Literary
Correspondence.'

Madame d'Epinay's salon was of all salons the
most thoroughly characteristic of the time and the
people. No one had any duty but to amuse him-
self. From early in the morning, a few charming
and accomphshed women, who always relegated

80 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

their children to servants, their stupid husbands
to oblivion, and their households to chance, talked
delightfully over their embroidery (with which the
fashion demanded they should toy) to men, of
whom among many astounding characteristics, not
the least astounding is their prodigious idleness
coupled with their prodigious literary production.

Galiani himself was the greatest attraction
Madame d'Epinay's circle could claim. When he
came in on a dripping country afternoon at La
Chevrette, or in some murky winter twilight in
Paris, there came with him, said Diderot, light,
brightness, gaiety, folly, mirth — everything which
makes one forget the cares of life. Mademoiselle
d'Ette, who was at once her hostess's worst and
dearest friend, looked up from her embroidery
frame with her stealthy eyes aglow to welcome an
acquisition so delightful. Madame d'Epinay was,
as ever, gay, caressing, insouciante. Diderot was
in ecstasies (he was always in an ecstasy about
something) at the little Italian's arrival. He was
a perfect treasure on a wet day ! If the toy-shops
made Galianis, everybody would buy one I

The Abbe takes his seat, cross-legged as usual,
and from that head which was *a library of
anecdotes,' reels out a dozen stories, acting them
all with an inimitable hveliness, while his hearers
laugh till they cry.

GALIANI: THE WIT 81

A few of those stories sound dull in print, or
have lost point with their youth ; many more dis-
gust modern taste by their elegant indecency.
But the man who dubbed Paris, 'the Cafe de
r Europe,' d'Holbach, ' the maitre dJhotel of philo-
sophy,' and the vaunted liberty of the Apostles of
the Social Contract, 'the right of interfering in
other people's business,' still proves his title of
wit. It was Galiani too who defined the death of
Maria Theresa as ' an ink-bottle spilt over the map
of Europe ; ' and Sophie Arnould's exquisite lost
voice as ' the most beautiful asthma ' he ever
heard. It was Galiani who said that suffering was
the cart-horse, and ennui the horse in the rich
man's stable. It was Galiani who declared that the
Jesuits lengthened the Creed and shortened the
Decalogue that they might succeed better in the
world, and Galiani who affirmed that the priests
had changed the name of the Sacrament from
Penitence to Confession, because they thought it
sufficient to avow their sins without correcting
them. Finally, it was Galiani who proved that
he knew intimately one side of the life around
him, when he declared that the women of the
eighteenth century loved with their minds, not
with their hearts.

Always inimitably good-humoured, never bored,
never weary, ready to play on the clavecin or sing

G

yy

82 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

in the most charming voice in the world if the
audience should tire of his conversation, seeing
the ridiculous side of any subject in a flash, prompt
with an anecdote to fit the most unforeseen occa-
sion — ' the little creature born at the foot of Vesu-
vius,' clown, harlequin, Punchinello — whatever
men called him — was, and is, without counter-
part in social history. There will be and have
been — there certainly were in the eighteenth cen-
tury — many agreeable young gentlemen who not
only often dined out, but who entirely lived and
fattened on a pretty taste in stories and hons mots,
and a constant readiness to make fools of them-
selves for the benefit of an idle audience afraid
of being bored ; but there was rarely, if ever, a
buffoon of such vast and solid erudition, of mental
capacities so great and so varied, and of mental
achievements so momentous, as the Abbe Galiani.
While the salons were petting and spoiling him,
while he seemed to be doing nothing but talk from
morning till night and from night until morning,
while he was regarded as such a complete and
irresistible joke that people laughed at his very
name, he had yet worked so hard as Secretary to
the Embassy and Charge d' Affaires that he raised
the whole diplomatic corps to a worthier posi-
tion, and advanced the interests of Naples with
a steadiness and persistency usually allotted to a

GALIANI: THE WIT 83

very different character. His Majesty Louis the
Fifteenth presented him with a box set in dia-
monds. Choiseul's light indifference changed into
a cool consideration. All the time the man was
writing, observing, thinking. Was he a politician
pour rire ? He seemed to be everything pour rire.
But after all, who knows ? The men who had
laughed the most heartily at his absurdities, turned
and looked at him again with a wonder in their
eyes.

In 1765 he obtained a year's leave of absence
and went home to take the baths of Ischia. In
1766, on the invitation of the Marquis Caraccioli,
Italian Ambassador, he went to stay in London.

It must be recorded regretfully that the Abbe
did not find Britain or the British at all to his
taste. David Hume said indignantly that though
he only remained two months in our country,
talked himself the whole time, and would not
allow an Englishman to put in a word, yet when :
he came away he dogmatised on the character of i
the nation all the rest of his life as if he had never '^
studied anything else. That he did not share the
Anglomania of Voltaire is certainly true. Some
years later, to one of his correspondents, he defined
the English rather happily as ' the best educated
nation in the world, and consequently the greatest,
the most troublesome, and the most melancholy.'

q2

84 THE FKIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

But some at least of his letters abuse England very
freely. It was, no doubt, as difficult for the
Britons to understand a Galiani as for a Galiani
to understand them ; and not at all wonderful that
he carried away from our shores an impression of
an Englishman as a solid, emotionless person, who
resented buffoonery as an insult, never uttered a joke
or saw one, and had all the qualities which make
a nation mighty and an individual disagreeable.

The Abbe was a somewhat graver man him-
self when he came back to Paris. He was now
thirty-eight years old, a little less free of tongue,
a thought less sceptical in religion. His letters
of the time contain grave observations on the
Seven Years' War, and on the condition of the
Paris Parliament. But he was still about the
salons, still Parisian to the finger-tips, and he still
loved Paris from his soul.

And in 1769, like a clap of thunder, came the
foudroyant news of his recall to Naples.

Eecalled! The hostesses of Paris looked at
each other in dismay. Eecalled ! It is surely the
end of all things if some political exigency, some
party question, is allowed to interfere with our
amusements Hke this ! Is it Choiseul, who has pro-
tected the Economists, while Galiani hated them,
who has done this thing ? The exact reason for it
was then matter of speculation, and is so still.

GALIANI: THE WIT 85

It was enough, more than enough, that it was a
fact that this dear, merry, little Abbe must pack
up his trunks and go out of light into darkness,
out of the sunshine of social favour in which he
had basked and purred and gambolled, into the
gloom of the provincial obscurity from which he
had come.

If Paris was struck with dismay, Galiani him-
self was overwhelmed by the greatest calamity of
his life. He declared that he had never wept at
anything, not even the death of his relations, so
much as at leaving Paris. ' They have torn me ]
from Paris,' he cried, ' and they have torn out
my heart.' He swore that the only good thing ]
that wearisome Mr. Sterne, the English author,
' ever uttered was when he said to me, " It is
better to die in Paris than to live in Naples." '
He wrung his hands, and bemoaned out loud,
according to his temperament. He followed his
departure by letters to Madame d'fipinay and to
d'Alembert which are really pathetic. He was
also leaving behind him in Paris a woman to whom
he was tied by an attachment, not Platonic. He
was torn, in brief, from everything — friends and
mistress, career, work, play — ^life itself. No wonder
despair seized his soul. He went, and in parting
flung into the camp of the Economists, whom he
believed to be the enemy responsible for his over-

86 THE FEIENDS OP VOLTAIRE

throw, a bomb whose explosion rang through
Europe.

In 1770 there appeared in Paris the ' Dialogues
on the Corn Trade.' The taxation of, or free
trade in, grain had long been a vexed question,
not only in the minds of politicians but in the
minds of all intelligent Frenchmen. Free Food !
cried the Economist, rich in the support of Turgot
and of Choiseul. Tax it ! replied their opponents,
mighty with the strength of Terrai, the graceless
Controller-General, and the growing influence of
Necker.

Through the wit and the parties, in the midst of
ardent secretarial duties and of continual literary
studies, somehow, at some time — though how and
at what time it would be difficult to say — Galiani
had brought to bear on the question his Italian
shrewdness and brilliancy, all the learning and
observation taught him by his uncle, and the
judgment and the wisdom taught him by Heaven.
No man would have believed that such a merry,
light, social person could have pondered so deeply ;
no one had believed it. The book was in the form
of a dialogue between a Marquis and a Chevalier.
It was as gay and rollicking as the little Abbe's
own talk. In fact, it was his own talk ; but it was
something much more. It was much more even
than a pamphlet on a passing question, on a matter

GALIANI: THE WIT 87

of local momentary importance, ' Eead between
the lines and in the margin,' it was an able work
on the science of government, what Grimm called
justly 'the production of a sound and enlightened
philosopher, and of a statesman.' In it the author
exposed his theory that a man of State must know
not only his business but the human heart — ^
' You must study men before you can rule them.' |
This knowledge he denied to Turgot ; and he |
warned France, in solemn prophecy to be fulfilled'
too soon, to beware in her rulers, not the rogues
and the knaves — they soon show themselves in
their true colours — but I'honnete homme trompL
' He wishes all men well, so all men trust him ;
but he is deceived as to the means of doing well.'

The work was received with the wildest enthu- *'
siasm. In far Ferney, the spirited old Patriarch
of Literature jumped for joy, almost literally, at
a wit and a style so inimitable. No man ever
reasoned so agreeably before. ... 'No man \
has ever made famine so amusing. ... If the
work does not diminish the price of bread, it will
give pleasure to the whole nation. . . . Plato
and Moliere have combined to write it. . . .'
Excellent ! excellent ! And in the same year, 1770,
the master himself wrote for his ' Questions on the
Encyclopaedia ' the article on Grain wherein Galiani
was not forgotten.

88 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

Diderot, who, with Grimm and Madame d'fipi-
nay, had helped to correct the proofs of the
' Dialogues,' declared impetuously to Mademoiselle
Volland that he had gone down on his knees to
implore Galiani to publish them. Grimm said that
if he were Controller- General he should attach the
Abbe to France, if it cost the King forty thousand
livres per annum, ' without any other stipulation
but that he should amuse himself and come twice
a week to chat with me over the affairs of my
Government.' Even Freron, filie Freron, the
brilliant Parisian journalist, who hated Voltaire
and consequently all Voltaire's colleagues and
disciples, could not help praising the thing in his
'' Literary Year.' Frederick the Great wrote the
author a flattering letter.

The book's foes advertised it even better than
its friends. At first, the leaders in the Economist
camp looked at each other in dismay. Granted
that they had justice and reason on their side,
what could justice and reason do in the Paris of
1770 against that bubbhng, sparkling wit? The
capital must, first of all, be amused. What use,
then, to advance the always doubtful argument
that a writer cannot be at once gay and trust-
worthy, that if he is really worth hearing he can
never be heard without a yawn ?

The Abbe Morellet, as large as Galiani was

GALIANI: THE WIT 89

small, and as ponderous in style as the Abbe was
light, was employed to answer him. The good
man wrote his refutation with such haste and
ardour that the skin of his little finger was com-
pletely worn off from much rubbing against the side
of his desk. And, after all, no one read him. He
may, or may not, be right ; he is certainly dull !

Then Turgot took up a mightier pen and
wielded a mightier influence. Noble and disin-
terested, a better and a greater man than Galiani,
the Statesman of that company of which the
Abbe was but the Wit, Turgot sought, as did
Galiani, the good and the progress of humanity ;
but he sought it by a diiferent road, and by the
labour of his whole life. He recognised the clever-
ness of the book ; a bad cause, said he, could not
be maintained with more grace and cleverness.
But my little brother the Abbe is wrong, not the
less. In the ' Dialogues ' there peeped out, thought
Turgot, something of the comfortable indifierence
of those who are content to leave the world as it is
because it goes so smoothly with them, something /
of the laziness and the selfishness that come
naturally to a little writer himself so comfortably
beneficed and mitred. Galiani lacked, in fact,
Turgot's 'instincts of the heart which teach the
head.'

Eight or wrong — Vhonnete homme trompe

90 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

perhaps — Turgot had put his soul into the great
cause of humanity, and Galiani had only put his
mind. What wonder that they saw the same
world with different eyes, and would have worked
out the salvation of faUing France, by methods not
only opposite but opposed ?

Galiani went back to Naples. For many months,
for years, his letters are full of his book, that effort
which, even if misdirected, proved that he was no
drone in the hive, that he too had that one great
virtue common to all the philosophers and redeem-
ing half their sins — he had heard the trumpet-call
of responsibility towards his fellows, and had
answered it.

After Paris, Naples was not merely dull, it was
extinction. The poor little Abbe bemoaned his
fate to Madame d'Epinay in the most touching of
all jesting letters. True, there was society here,
and Galiani was its lion. But what society ! There
was Lady Orford, Eobert Walpole's daughter-in-
law, who had a country house close to Galiani's at
Santo Sorio, at the foot of Vesuvius, and there
was Sir William Hamilton, now British envoy and,
to be, the husband of Lady Hamilton. Presently
there came, too, the Marquis of Lansdowne, who
was amiable, which, said Galiani, ' is a very rare
thing for an Englishman, and Secretary of State,
which is a very common thing.'

GALIANI: THE WIT 91

But the Abbe hated the English ; and he was
bored to death. The Court of Naples gave him
more lucrative posts — and though he described
himself as avide without being avare, which meant
that he was greedy of money and yet lavish in
spending it — money, even w^hen it does not beget
ennui^ certainly never destroys it. He turned to
his museum full of medals and bronzes, pictures
and weapons — and that bored him too. Paris,
Paris ! He hankered after it for ever. ' What is
the good of inoculation here,' he grumbled, after
expressing delight in that discovery, ' when living
itself is not worth while? ' ' What a life ! ' he wrote
dismally to d'Holbach in 1770. 'Nothing amusing
here ... no edicts ... no suspensions of pay-
ment ... no quarrels about anything — not even
about religion. Dear Paris, how I regret you ! '

In 1771 died there that Madame Daubiniere to
whom he had been attached by no Platonic tie, and
whom he had not hesitated to recommend to the
good offices of Madame d'Epinay ; and in the same
year the death of Helvetius, the rich and amiable
ex-Farmer-General, ' left a blank in the line of our
battalion.' 'Let us love each other the better,
we who remain,' says Galiani. ' Close the lines.
Advance ! Fire ! ' He was always declaring he had
no heart ; but it was there, under the lava of world-
liness and mockery, as Pompeii and Herculaneum

92 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

lay hid beneath the lava of his own Vesuvius.
He was soon busy procuring a post at Court for
his unsuccessful brother Bernard — Bernard, who
had a large family, little money, and the dull
bookworm talents that bring no more. Then
Bernard died, and up starts the Abbe in a new
role. There are three stupid nieces to be married,
to say nothing of the widow ! The indefatigable
uncle found the girls eligible husbands, although
one of them, as he wrote frankly, was as ugly as a
hunchback. Then he discovered some one to marry
his sister-in-law. ' If this goes on,' he wrote to
Madame d'Epinay, ' people will clap when I go into
my box at the theatre.'

Presently the King of Naples gave him yet two
more posts — entailing not only emoluments but
work — and he resumed his literary labours, wrote
a pamphlet on the ' Instincts and Habitual Tastes
of Man,' a comic opera, to Paisiello's music,
called ' The Imaginary Socrates,' and another most
amusing pamphlet, written in a single night, to
distract the Neapolitans from their fright on the
eruption of Vesuvius in 1779.

In 1781 he visited Eome, and was courted by
all the great people; and when he came home
Naples gave him another rich abbey and another
most lucrative civil appointment. He was still a
comparatively young man. Fortune had over-

GALIANI: THE WIT 93

turned her horn at his feet. ' The torment of all
things accomplished, the plague of nought to
desire/ might well have been Galiani's. But he
had the rare power of finding happiness where
it most often hides — in small and common things.
The monkey which had amused his leisure he had
replaced by a couple of cats, and it afforded him
infinite amusement to watch their gambols and
their habits, and write long dissertations on the
natural history of the animal to Madame d'fipinay
in Paris.

His friendship with her had lasted without
break or blot for nearly five-and-twenty years.
If happiness meant only exemption from suffering,
then well for Galiani that no woman ever held his
heart more nearly than this light, bright, irre-
sponsible little person. But that side of existence
which brings the deepest sorrow brings too the
highest joy, and who is spared the first, misses the
second. Madame Daubiniere had touched neither
his soul nor his life ; Madame d'Epinay only aroused
a capacity for a friendship which, as he loved no
one, had certainly assumed some of the absorption
of a passion. When she died in 1783, he stood
in the presence of a great and a most genuine
sorrow. She had represented the Paris he would
see no more ; to answer her letters had been a
large occupation in his life — and she was dead!

94 THE FRIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

He turned to his work as his last hope, to the one
means that was left of making life endurable. In
1785 he was attacked by apoplexy, and two years
later he travelled for his health. But it was not
improved. ' The dead are so bored,' he said in his
old jesting manner ; ' they have asked me to come
and cheer them a little.'

In the October of 1787 the King and Queen of
Naples commanded him to meet them at Portici.
He went, but he was long past receiving pleasure
from such honours. The Sovereigns were struck
with his altered appearance, and begged him to
consult a doctor. Queen Caroline wrote him a
letter imploring him to renounce his scepticism
and make ready for heaven. He answered with
dignity and respect ; but no physician for either
the soul or the body could aid him now. He
kept his gaiety to the last. As he had loved in
life to be surrounded by friends, they were about
his deathbed. He declared to them that he felt
no sorrow in dying, save that he would fain have
lived to publish his book on Horace. The night
before his death Gatti, his friend and doctor, told
him he had refused an invitation to the opera
from the Ambassador of France to be near his
friend. ' Ah,' says Galiani, ' you still look on me
as Harlequin ? Well, perhaps I shall prove more
amusing than the opera.' And he did. Two hours

GALIANI: THE WIT 95

before his death General Acton, the Prime Minister,
called to see him. ' Tell his Excellency I cannot
receive him. My carriage is at the door. Warn
him to prepare his own.'

He died on October 30, 1787, aged nearly fifty-
nine.

Dagonet, King's Fool at Arthur's Court, could
not avert his master's ruin, but, noblest of all
Fools, he tried. Galiani, with his laughing bells
jingling in those 'Dialogues,' spoke his message
in jests and could not help starving France, nor
even postpone by an hour the raid on the bakers'
shops in the Faubourg St. Antoine. But he, too,
did his best.

96 THE FRIENDS OP VOLTAIEE

IV
VAUVENARGUES: THE APRORIST

The proverb is indigenous to Spain, verse to Italy,
and the aphorism to France. In that form of
speech in which, in Vauvenargues' own words.
La Eochefoucauld had 'turned men from virtue
by persuading them that it is never genuine,'
Vauvenargues vindicated human goodness, showed
man that the best way to reform the world is to
reform himself, and taught him how to use the
freedom Voltaire gave him.

In his delicate thoughtfulness, in his convic-
tion that man's happiness depends upon his
character and not upon his circumstances, in his
mistrust of the cold god, Eeason, and his belief
in the soundness of the intuitions of the heart,
Vauvenargues stands alone among his compeers.
He stands alone, too, among them in his personal
nearness to Voltaire's affections. The noblest
testimony to Vauvenargues' character is that it
compelled the reverence of him who reverenced

LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES.
From a Print in the Bibliotheqxie Nationale, Paris.

^esELie;^

Of

THE

^4Ul'0RH}h

VAUVENARGUES : THE APHORIST 97

nothing; and the finest compliment ever paid to
Voltaire was to be loved by a Vauvenargues.

Born on August 6, 1715, at Aix in Pro-
vence — in a mean house which still stands and
is to-day a grocer's shop — Luc de Vauvenargues
came of a poor family of provincial noblesse and
was from the first what he remained to the last,
delicate in constitution and with limited prospects
of worldly success.

His very imperfect education he received at
the College of Aix, where his small Latin and less
Greek were frequently interrupted by ill health.
But he had a possession which is in itself an
education — a good father.

Joseph de Clapiers had been created Marquis
de Vauvenargues in 1722, when Luc was seven
years old, for having been the only magistrate in
Aix who did not run away from the place and his
duty when a pestilence devastated the country-
side in 1720.

For companions, Luc had two younger
brothers and a cousin of his own age, a coarse,
clever, selfish, undisciplined boy, named Victor
Eiquetti Mirabeau, who was to become the
' crabbed old Friend of Men ' and the great father
of a greater son. The boys had little in common
but genius, and were attracted to each other by

H

98 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

their very unlikeness. At sixteen, Luc was reading
with passionate transport that ' splendid painting of
virtue' 'Plutarch's Lives' (in a translation) and
then the letters of Brutus to Caesar, 'so filled
with dignity, loftiness, passion, and courage,' said
he, ' that I never could read them calmly.' Victor
had already plunged into that blusterous, incon-
tinent life which was to bring ruin to his own
family and quite spoil the effect of his loud-voiced
schemes for the good of mankind.

When both were seventeen the pair parted for
a while. Luc must choose one of the only two
professions open to his caste — the Church or the
Army. The Church would not do, because, boy
though he was, he was already philosopher and
thinker — ay, in the noblest sense of the word —
free-thinker too. Then it must be the Army!
Picture this new subaltern of the King's Own
Eegiment, in the loveliest pale grey uniform, faced
with Eoyal blue, with the most splendid braidings,
and the very buttonholes sewn with gold silk,
with his tall, boyish figure, his handsome face, his
' proud and pensive grace '—for all the world like
the soldier-hero of a woman's novel. But he was
already something very different from that. The
handsome face bespoke a noble nature, ambitious
for all great things, strong and ready to begin the
world, to play his part therein if it be the part of

VAUVENARGUES : THE APHORIST 99

a man of Deeds alone — or if the Deeds be but
foundation for the Thoughts.

His first campaign was in Italy in 1733 with
Marshal Villars, who was on his last. Italy ! the
land of dreams ! The boy was filled with splendid
visions of following Hannibal across the mountains
— with young sanguine hopes of gloriously doing
his duty and meeting immediate, glorious rewards.
For three years he knew the intoxication — and
the horrors — of a victorious campaign. And then
of a sudden he found himself condemned at
one-and-twenty to the vicious idleness, the low
pleasures, and the deadening routine of a garrison
life. The rich oflScers were of course drawn by
that magnet, the Court, to keep up their military
studies and prepare for the next war by dancing
attendance on women and flattering the Minister
and the King at Versailles. The poor ones re-
mained on duty — with not enough of it to keep
them out of mischief, and with, for the most part,
debased tastes, because their intellectual limita-
tions precluded them from higher.

The contamination of that useless existence
even a Vauvenargues did not wholly escape.
For a brief while he was as other men are. But
the pleasures of a garrison town could not long
hold such a nature as his. Already — he was
but twenty-two — he had that love of solitude

H 2

100 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

which, says a great German philosopher, is wel-
comed or avoided as a man's personal value is
great or small. Already — at an age when other
men scarcely realise they have a soul — this man
was dominated by the idea of its value and
dignity ; and deep within him was the passion and
resolution to exercise to the full its powers and
possibilities.

With his companions he was wholly simple,
natural, and friendly — without the faintest taint
of that conscious superiority which makes many
good people at once useless as a moral influence
and objectionable as companions. 'Father,' his
brother officers used to call him. Marmontel said
'he held all our souls in his hands.' He soon
resumed, by correspondence, his friendship with
Victor Mirabeau ; and in their discussions on love
— the view he takes of this passion is always a
sure test of a man's character — each letter- writer
showed the yawning gulf that divided him from
the other.

If Vauvenargues ever met the woman worthy
to hold his heart, to be, in the finest and highest
understanding of those words, his companion and
completion, is not known. He writes of love as if
he had felt it. But to some pure souls — as to a
Milton and a St. John the Divine — are revealed in
visions the Eden and the New Jerusalem wherein

VAUVENARGUES : THE APHOEIST lOi

they never walked. Yauvenargues' letters to
Mirabeau treat of the subject with such an ex-
quisite dignity and refinement — with such noble
silences — that there is at least no doubt that if he
never found the woman who would have realised
his ideals, he was spared the bitterness of loving
one who broke them.

Cousin Victor easily perceived that this thought-
ful young soldier was fitted for something widely
different from the life of a garrison town. Come
up to Paris, then ! Take up letters as a career !
Win the smiles of the Court, and a pension from
the Privy Purse ! But Yauvenargues not only
preferred literature to the sham called literary
fame, but he loved his own profession.

Thinker as nature had made him, thinker,
moralist, aphorist as he has come down the ages,
he was first of all a man of action, and so sound
in thought because he was so strong in deeds.
All his maxims were ' hewn from life.' When the
death of the Emperor Charles YI. in 1740 shook
the kingdoms of Europe as a child shakes its
marbles in a bag, Luc de Yauvenargues shouldered
his knapsack and went out to Bohemia under the
command of Belle-Isle. Eeady to dare and to do,
brave, young, high-spirited, knowing no career
more glorious than arms, he looked round him and
drew from keen experience his views of the world.

102 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

The philosopher in a study, weighing the pros
and cons of motives he knows by hearsay, of deeds
of which he has read, of passions he has never
felt, may be a very fine thinker, but will hardly be
chosen as a sound guide to practice.

The explorer who has faced the torrent and
the mountain, the burning sun of the desert,
hunger and cold and thirst, who has himself
fought with beasts at Ephesus, will have a know-
ledge of the country he has discovered, which
no books and lectures, no geographical or topo-
graphical knowledge can ever give to the cleverest
student at home. The worth and the use of
Vauvenargues' axioms on life lie largely in the
fact that he had been there himself.

The very brief triumph of the capture of
Prague in 1742 was succeeded by the horrors of
the great mid- winter march from Prague to Egra.
The King's Own sufiered terribly. Death, defeat,
famine, Vauvenargues knew not as names but as
realities. In the spring of 1742 he had lost a
young comrade, de Seytres, and wrote an iloge of
him. Its immature and stilted style gives little
idea of the warm feeling it clothed. Morley speaks
of Vauvenargues' 'patient sweetness and equa-
nimity ' as a friend ; and records how hardship
made him ' not sour,' but wise and tender. All
through that fearful march, in this strange soldier's

VAUYENARGUES : THE APHORIST 103

knapsack were the manuscripts of ' Discourses
on Fame and Pleasure,' 'Counsels to a Young
Man,' and a ' Meditation on Faith.' Of many of
his maxims on patience and the brave endurance
of suffering, he must have found at this time cruel
personal need.

The handsome young officer who had left
France in the prime of his hopes and his manhood,
returned to it with his health utterly ruined,
both his legs frost-bitten, and his lungs seriously
affected.

Still, he gathered together the strength he had
left him and the pluck that never failed him, re-
joined his regiment in Germany in 1743, fought
nobly for his fallen cause at Dettingen, and re-
turned to the garrison of Arras at the end of the
year, an invalid for life.

Tt was now obvious he could no longer pursue
his calling. Though he wrote with a keen and
bitter truth that courage had come to be re-
garded as a popular delusion, patriotism as a
prejudice, and that 'one sees in the army only
disgust, ennui, neglect, murmuring ; luxury and
effeminacy have produced the same effrontery
as peace; and those who should, from their
position, arrest the progress of the evil, en-
courage it by their example,' yet still he would,
if he could, have been soldier to the end. For

104 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

a time he thought of diplomacy. ' Great posi-
tions soon teach great minds,' was one of his
axioms. He would have been well fitted. But
merit was not of the slightest help to advance-
ment. To fawn on the King and the Mistress, to
prostitute one's life and one's talents to a Court —
here was the way to promotion. Vauvenargues
wrote to the King and corresponded with Amelot
the Minister, who answered most amiably and
affably — and did nothing at all. ' Permit me, sir,'
wrote Vauvenargues to him at last, with the
directness taught in camps, ' to assure you that
it is a moral impossibility for a gentleman, with
nothing but zeal to commend him, ever to reach
the King.' Amelot, stung a little, promised the
next vacant post, and this time promised sincerely.

Vauvenargues retired to Provence and to quiet,
to learn his new business. There he was attacked
by confluent small-pox, which left him nearly
blind and wholly disfigured : a misfortune he felt
painfully as ' one of those accidents which prevent
the soul from showing itself.' But worse than
any disfigurement, the partial blindness made, of
course, a diplomatic career an impossibility for
ever.

Before the campaign of 1743, Vauvenargues
had introduced himself to Arouet de Voltaire, by
a letter in which the obscure soldier-critic com-

VAUVENAEGUES : THE APHORIST 105

pared Corneille disadvantageously with Eacine.
Nothing is so delightful in Voltaire's own genius
as his generous recognition of other men's.
Nothing is more to his honour than his high ad-
miration for the moral gifts of a Vauvenargues
who was young enough to be his son, who was
poor, forlorn, a nobody, and whose fine qualities
of lofty highmindedness, delicacy, patience and
serenity found, alas ! no counterpart in Voltaire's
own nature. It is so much the more to his credit
that he could admire what he could never imitate,
and appreciate what was wholly foreign to his
temperament. He rejoiced in the thoughtful
ability of that letter. ' It is the part of such a
man as you,' he replied, ' to have preferences but
no exclusions.'

The campaign of 1743 had interrupted their
relationship. But they resumed it now, and,
behold ! it had turned into friendship.

Voltaire was at this time fifty years old, famous
as the author of the ' English Letters,' the ' Hen-
riade,' a few brilliant plays, and also as Court
wit and versifier. But he was already in mental
attitude what he had not yet become in mental
output and in active deed. He could recognise
in this Vauvenargues not only a friend and a
literary critic, but a thinker and a philosopher.
Vauvenargues sent him by degrees most of his

106 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

writings, and Voltaire's criticisms thereon, as sincere
as they were enthusiastic, were in themselves a
powerful persuasion to the man of deeds to become
man of words ; while the Master's whole-hearted
devotion to his own profession — the best and the
noblest of all, though it bring no bread but the
bread of affliction and of tears — was a further
strong inducement to Vauvenargues to join the
great brotherhood too. This soldier-thinker can
tell men what to do when we have made them free
to do what they will ! He is, he has confessed it, as
'follement amoureux de la liberte' as I myself!
To the individual soul he can give the help and
the courage I have tried to give to the race, and
to the riddle of the painful earth he can bring a
wiser, tenderer, and braver solution than mine !

Vauvenargues was not, in fact, an intellect a
Voltaire would lose. The young soldier decided
to adopt literature as a profession, and began the
world afresh.

Everything, save only Voltaire's encourage-
ment, was against such a decision. The old
Marquis de Vauvenargues — from a very natural
but very mistaken and unrobust tenderness —
would have kept his son at home to lead a safe,
idle, invalid life in Provence, with a stroll on the
terrace of the Vauvenargues' country-house for
exercise, a thick-headed provincial neighbour for

VAUVENARGUES : THE APHOBIST 107

mental recreation, and his own aches and pains
for an interest. His other relations (on the
principle of Myrtle in 'The Conscious Lovers'
— ' We never had one of our Family before that
descended from Persons that Did anything')
objected to letters for one of Us as a low walk,
leading directly to the Bastille. It was true that
the moment was an inglorious one for literature.
The Encyclopaedia was unconceived. Voltaire
himself was not yet the mighty influence he
was to become. Writing did pay badly, and the
young Marquis was deadly poor. Greatest objec-
tion of all was his own strong leaning to a life
of action, and he himself first wrote of literature
as being as ' repugnant ' to him as to his family.
' But necessity knows no law.'

That momentary bitterness passed. 'Despair
is the worst of faults,' said he. It was his part —
allotted to him by misfortune, by fate, by God —
no longer to act himself, but to teach other
men how to act. He thrust aside the objections
of his relatives. ' It is better to derogate from
one's caste than from one's genius.' He silenced
his own disappointment. 'A great soul loves
to fight against ill fortune . . . and the battle
pleases him, independently of the victory.'

In May, 1745, he came up to Paris, and in a
very humble lodging, where the Eue Larrey and

108 THE FBIENDS OF VOLTAIKE

the Scliool of Medicine are now situated, began
the world afresh.

Anyone who supposes his discontent to come
from his circumstances and not from himself,
should consider the life of Vauvenargues, and
the one book with which he has enriched
humanity.

Disappointed, disfigured, a failure ; useless
for the career he had loved, incapable of the
career he had tried ; cast off by his own people ;
solitary in a great city; often in pain of body,
and because the work he had chosen was not the
work Nature had originally chosen for him, often
in pain of mind too — if ever man had an excuse
for cursing God and fate, it was surely Luc de
Vauvenargues.

La Eochefoucauld, rich and prosperous, with
friends, position, and honour, had denied human
virtue, and assailed it with cold malignities which
still strike despair into the soul; and Voltaire
himself, the most successful man of letters in
history, turned upon life with gibes, and sneered
at faith and happiness as alike chimaeras.

But Vauvenargues looked out on the world
which had given him nothing, with serene and
patient eyes, and in a single book, as direct, strong,
and simple as his own nature, evolved one of the
most wise and comforting, one of the most sane.

VAUVENAEGUES : THE APHOEIST 109

serene, and practical schemes of life, given to our
race.

The great questions. Why am I ? Whither go
I ? Whence came I ? he asked himself as a
thoughtful man must, but being a doer long before
he was a thinker, he wasted little time in vainly-
seeking to answer them. Among his papers are a
Prayer as well as the ' Meditation.' For simple faith
he had ever reverence and envy — for all solemn
questions a deep respect ; and though he had no
formulated religion, was yet deeply religious. But
with him to be religious meant to Do Well. Live
this life aright, and the next will take care of itself.
' The thought of death deceives us, it makes us
forget to live : one must live as if one would never
die.' To waste time and energy in idle discussion
and speculation on another world when there is
so much to do to set this one straight, found no
countenance from this man of Deeds. Do, not
dream, was his motto for ever.

There is not a page in his book — there is
scarcely a line — which does not bear witness to
his strong faith in men's honour and goodness, to
his passionate conviction that out of worst evil
one can get good, that the cruellest misfortunes
ennoble and purify if one will let them, and our
griefs may be for ever our gains. The hand that
wrote was fevered with disease. No rich man,

110 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

this, announcing glibly how comfortable it is to be
poor. In the most vicious of all ages — and in not
the least vicious of that age's environments —
Vauvenargues had preserved his high ideals and
his lofty character, and in sickness, sorrow, and
disappointment he practised daily the courage he
preached.

Instead of mockery — the besetting sin of his
generation — this man, and this man alone, had for
men's follies and absurdities only infinite compas-
sion. Of him has been aptly quoted Bacon's
beautiful phrase, ' he had an aspect as though he
pitied men.' His philosophy remains for ever to
the unquiet heart at once balm and tonic — the
cool hand of compassion on the burning fore-
head — the touch of a friend, who knows — the
strong grasp of help to raise the feeble from his
weakness and despair, and to make him do what
he can.

Some of the axioms have become part of men's
speech, if not part of their soul.

' Great thoughts come from the heart.'

' We should comfort ourselves for not having
fine talents, as we comfort ourselves for not having
fine positions; we can be above both by the heart.'

'Great men undertake great things because
they are great, and fools because they think them
easy.'

VAUVENARGUES : THE APHORIST 111

'Would you say great things? Then first
accustom yourself never to say false ones.'

' Who can bear all, can dare all.'

' Envy is confessed inferiority.'

' Few sorrows are without remedy : despair is
more deceptive than hope.'

' Who gives his word lightly, breaks it.'

' He who has great feeling, knows much.'

' To the passions one owes the best things of
the mind.'

Into that mad devotion to wit which was the
snare of all his compeers, Vauvenargues never fell.
He worshipped at the shrine of a diviner goddess
called Truth. There is not a single example —
even in his maxims, when the temptation would
naturally be strongest — of his sacrificing fidelity
to smartness.

In February 1746, after he had been less than
a year in Paris, he published anonymously that
book by which he has gone down the ages and
up to the gods, and which contains only the
'Introduction to the Knowledge of the Human
Mind,' some ' Eeflections,' the ' Counsels to a Young
Man,' a few critical articles, the 'Meditation on
Faith,' and the ' Maxims.'

Clear, clean, and vigorous in style, as sharp
and brief as a military order — it was well said by
a friend that its author ' wanted first of all to get

112 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

along quickly and drag little baggage after him ; '
and better said by himself that, * when an idea will
not bear a simple form of expression, it is the sign
for rejecting it.'

It was not the sort of work likely to bring him
present fame, or money. He did not expect them.
As he worked in his miserable lodgings, ill lit and
ill warmed, already a prey to consumption, and
suffering often acutely from the old frost-bites — no
such hopes had buoyed him. But he did what he
had told other men to do — worked for the work's
sake — and he found what he had told them they
would find, joy in the working and satisfaction in
a noble aim, be it unrewarded for ever.

The book dropped from the press perfectly
stillborn. Eeflections and moralities in the Paris
of 1746 ! No, thank you. No one even troubled
to abuse it. No one, except Marmontel, who was
Yauvenargues' personal friend, reviewed it. But
Voltaire loudly pronounced it one of the best books
in the language : ' The age ... is not worthy of
you, but it has you, and I bless Nature. A year ago
I said you were a great man, and you have be-
trayed my secret.' After Yauvenargues' death he
wrote of him, ' How did you soar so high in this
age of littleness ? ' and spoke of the ' Maxims ' as
characteristic of a profoundly sincere and thought-
ful mind, wholly above all jealousies and party

VAUVENAEGUES : THE APHOEIST 113

spirit. For sixty years the book lay germinating
in a hard and barren soil, unworthy of it; and
then rose fresh and strong from oblivion to the
just and growing fame it enjoys to-day. It has
been well said ' to give the soul of man an impetus
towards truth.'

Though his tastes, his poverty, and his health
alike precluded Yauvenargues from joining in the
socialities of the cafes and the salons during his
brief life in Paris, he saw sometimes Marmontel and
d'Argental, and often Voltaire. Marmontel was
still only a boy who had just started literary life
on a capital of six louis and the patronage of Vol-
taire ; and d'Argental, Voltaire's dear ' guardian
angel,' was the nephew of Madame de Tencin, and,
perhaps, the author of her novels. Marmontel was
on a very different plane of intellect and character
from Vauvenargues — while the one was a lusty
boy beginning the world, the other was a patient
thinker who was leaving it. But in those bare
and dreary surroundings, in the disfigured invalid
of whom men had never heard, even the common-
place cleverness of a Marmontel worshipped a hero.
Long years after, he speaks of Vauvenargues' ' un-
alterable serenity ' — of his brave and tender heart.
' With him one learnt to live and learnt to die.'

As for Voltaire, one can picture him just
elected to the French Academy, the proteg^ of

114 THE FRIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

Madame de Pompadour, the dearest friend of
young Frederick the Great, and fast becoming the
most astonishing man in Europe, entering into the
dull room, full of liveliness and animation, ay, and
full too of real kindness and sympathy, while the
invalid sat by the fireside listening silently awhile,
and then striking across the Master's brilliant
volubility with some quiet truth which he had
long proved and pondered. That he found Vol-
taire's conversation a powerful stimulus to his
own mind, and a very real delight, is not doubt-
ful. There are few Yoltaires in the world, and it
was one of Vauvenargues' misfortunes that, save
Victor Mirabeau, he had known scarcely anyone
who was his intellectual equal.

But if Voltaire roused the mind, Vauvenargues
strengthened the soul. After his death, Voltaire
wrote of him that he had always seen him ' the
most unfortunate and the most tranquil of men.'
It was this lucky genius of an Arouet who brought
his fumings and his impatience, his irritableness
over this, his chagrins about that, for the consola-
tion of the man to whose sufferings his own had
been as a drop in the ocean. Vauvenargues always
seems the elder of the two, as it were. He was as
certainly the wiser, as he was certainly the far
inferior genius.

What were his thoughts when those few friends

VAUVENAKGUES : THE APHORIST 115

had left him? It is on their testimony that he
never uttered a complaining or a bitter word.
His writings contain not an angry line — not one
rebellion against God and Fate. It was the happy
people who grumbled — perhaps it always is. Once,
only once, there is a striving against destiny. In
a moment of relaxation from bodily pain he wrote
to an intimate friend, 'I have need of all your
affection, my dear Saint-Vincens : all Provence is
in arms, and I am here at my fireside.' He went
on to offer his feeble help to the service he had
loved, and to beg for the smallest post in his old
active career.

But in a second came realisation. He was too
ill to be of any use. Only thirty-two, he saw life
slipping from him, and leaving him at that fireside
a wreck, only fit for the hulks. But he bore ' his
dark hour unseen,' and troubled no man with his
troubles.

His disease gained on him daily now. For the
last year he was too ill to write. How far harder
to die bravely by inches, unable even to do one's
work, than to rush a smihng hero upon the swords
in a glorious moment of exaltation, unweakened
by disease, and uplifted by the applause of just
men and of one's own heart !

Vauvenargues saw death coming slowly while
it was yet a great way off, and was not afraid.

116 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

No saint this, beholding in fervid ecstasy the vision
of a world to come ; but a strong man who had
done his best with the world he had, and had
written of that unknown future only in patient
hope. ' My passions and thoughts die but to be
born again : every night I die on my bed but to
take again new strength and freshness: this ex-
perience of death reassures me against the decay
and the dissolution of my body/

He had lived to do his duty and to think of
others, and thus he died.

The date was May 28, 1747, and the period
one of the least honourable in the life of his friend
Voltaire. But from his sycophancy of Pope
and King, from a foul and noisy Court, from
feverish bickerings with his Madame du Ch^telet,
and the coarse worldliness of his old Duchesse du
Maine, Yauvenargues' death recalled him to his
truer self, and roused him to the real work of
his life. No other loss he ever suffered, it is
said, affected him more profoundly.

If the fact that Yauvenargues loved him bears
high testimony to the character of Yoltaire, the
virtue of Yauvenargues, like the virtue of Addison,
may well give ' reputation to an age.'

Flippant and false, at once supremely clever
and supremely silly, the eighteenth century, to
whom Duty was a mockery and Wit was a god,

VAUVENAEGUES : THE APHOEIST 117

is in some sort redeemed by the brave, silent life,
and the high ideals he proved practical and not
visionary by fulfilling himself, of this soldier
aphorist.

While of all the Brothers of Progress, Yau-
venargues alone approached Truth as a suppliant,
and thus gained, surely, the nearest vision of her
face.

118 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

V
UHOLBACH: THE HOST

In the most sociable city, in the most sociable
age in the history of the world, there is one man
who stands out as the host par excellence. In the
Kue Eoyale at Paris and in his country house at
Grandval, near Charenton, Baron d'Holbach enter-
tained for more than thirty years the wit and the
celebrity of all nations. His name runs like a
thread through the English memoirs and letters
of the mid-eighteenth century. There was not a
Frenchman or a Frenchwoman of fame and fashion
who had not dined at the Eue Eoyale on the
immortal Thursdays and Sundays, or driven down
from Paris to Grandval for a few days of a com-
pany and a conversation unequalled and, perhaps,
unrivalled.

But it is not only or chiefly as the Host of
All the World that d'Holbach is remarkable.
He was the ' maitre d' hotel of philosophy.' Vol-
taire, banned and exiled, could only encourage

PAUL-HENRI-THIRY, BARON D'HOLBACH.
From a Portrait in the Musee CoiuU, Cliantilhj.

D'HOLBACH: THE HOST 119

his children from lonely Cirey or far Geneva.
D'Holbach was here, in the midst of them.

Comfortable, cultured, liberal, the freest of
all free thinkers, and yet always in the smiling
good favour of the authorities, not shy and retir-
ing like d'Alembert, not wild and imprudent like
Diderot, without a profession to distract him from
his appointed metier^ with a well-stocked mind,
an enormous income, a fine library, a pretty wife,
a first-rate cook, and an admirable cellar — why,
here was the man intended by Fate to be the link
to bind us together and to make for us a meeting-
place, a common ground, where, in words to be
first appHed only to the Head of our Party,

In very wantonness of childish mirth

We puffed Bastilles, and thrones, and shrines away,
Insulted Heaven, and liberated earth.

Was it for good or evil ? Who shall say ?

Paul-Henri-Thiry d'Holbach was born in 1723
at Heidelsheim, in the Palatinate. His father, said
Jean Jacques Eousseau when he had quarrelled
with the son, was a parvenu. Another of Paul-
Henri's guests announced that his host was called
Baron because he was ' of German origin, had a
small estate in Westphalia, and an income of sixty
thousand livres.* Very little is known with cer-
tainty of his family. He was brought up in Paris,

120 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIKE

and was from the first French of the French,
Parisian of the Parisians. He seems to have visited
Germany as a very young man, and to have studied
natural science there. He made his bow to the
literary world by translating German scientific
works into French. At his death Grimm wrote
in the ' Literary Correspondence ' that the rapid
progress natural history and chemistry had made
for thirty years in France was largely owing to
the Baron d'Holbach.

As a young man the Baron was what he
remained all his life — a compiler, an annotator,
a transcriber, rather than the possessor of any
great original talent of his own. Boy and man he
had in perfection that gift which surely makes
for human happiness more than any other single
quality — a devoted love of learning. He was
always rich enough to buy the books and the
leisure to gratify that love. He lived in an age
and in the midst of brilliantly accomplished men
and women. He should have found life delightful.
He did. A serene, easy, generous nature, troubled
by no agitating ambitions, everything seems to have
fallen out from the first according to his modest
desires. For him, and for him alone among
Voltaire's co-operators, the path to light and
knowledge flowered pleasantly all the way. The
others look out eagerly from their portraits —

D'EOLBACH: THE HOST 121

furrowed foreheads and burning eyes — or with
faces noble and sad, hke d'Alembert or Condorcet.
Only the good Baron is seated at his ease in his
pleasant, sumptuous garden, surveying life calmly
and leisurely. Which things are a parable.

In 1752 or 3 753, when he was about thirty
years old, he began writing articles for that Ency-
clopaedia which set on almost all its other contri-
butors the ban of Government ill-favour. Only
Paul-Henri — writing always judiciously under a
pseudonym — gained nothing but pleasure and ap-
probation from his excellent papers on mineralogy
and chemistry. He formed the happiest life-long
friendships with his fellow-writers in that im-
mortal book. He married a pretty and charming
wife. Mademoiselle d'Aine. She died, in August
1754, after a very brief married life. D'Holbach
travelled abroad with Grimm for a while.

In 1755, he obtained a special dispensation
from the Pope, and married his deceased wife's
sister. Mademoiselle Charlotte-Suzanne d'Aine,
and began to live with her a life which presented
the very rare combination of perfect domestic con-
tentment and the most brilliant social success.

In the very heart and core of Paris, Kue
Eoyale hutte Saint-Eoch, the Baron held in his
town house what Eousseau calls the 'club hol-
bachique,' Diderot ' the synagogue of the Eue

122 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

Eoyale/ and Garat ' the Institute of France before
there was one.' Here, at two o'clock every Sun-
day and Thursday, unless the d'Holbachs were in
the country, their friends were certain to find a
free and affluent hospitality, the most intellectual
society of the capital, the most distinguished
foreigners who visited it, a host as liberal in idea
as in the very good cheer to which he made his
guests welcome, and the most daring speculative
conversation of the eighteenth century.

But, after all, it was not in the Eue Eoyale
that d'Holbach and his friends found their most
characteristic setting. Grandval, near Charenton,
remains not only the most influential salon of the
age, the great headquarters of a great party and the
arsenal in which were forged the armaments which
destroyed a king, a dynasty, and a state religion,
but also the country house of the period.

When Talleyrand, in that much quoted phrase,
declared that no one knew how delightful a thing
life could be unless he had belonged to the upper
classes before the Eevolution, he might have been
thinking of the life at Grandval in particular.

There was a fine and charming chdteaii, and
the most delightful of gardens. Grandval was just
near enough to Paris, and just far enough away —
which is to say, it was absolute country, within
easy reach of town, in an age when the suburb

D'HOLBACH: THE HOST 123

was not, or, at least, when the social drawbacks
comprehended in the word 'suburban' had no
existence. The estate actually belonged to Madame
d'Aine, d'Holbach's mother-in-law, who was as
' lively as any romp of fifteen,' always thoroughly
enjoying herself, determined her guests should do
the same, and with the rare wisdom to leave them
to do it in their own way.

Madame d'Holbach was pretty, gay, and charm-
ing. She played on the lute, adored her husband
and children, and hated philosophy. If her guests
like to talk it — and they are always talking it —
well, by all means, so they shall ! Live and let
live, do as you like come what may — these would
have been the Grandval rules, if it had ever
bothered itself to have anything so tiresome as
rules.

The d'Holbach children were adorable — or des-
patched to governesses and servants if they even
threatened to become less than adorable. There
were two little boys and a couple of little girls, the
elder 'as pretty as a cherub,' said Diderot, and
the younger ' a ball of fat, all pink and white.'

Then there was an ami de la maison, a house-
hold fixture, a chimney-corner habitue — a Scotch-
man named Hope, and nicknamed Pere Hoop —
a shrivelled, withered, pessimistic person, who
sufiered, or said he suffered, from ' Ufe-weariness '

124 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

and bad health, who was an excellent foil to what
Sterne called the 'joyous sett' in which he found
himself, and the perpetual and dismally good-
natured butt of Madame d'Aine's rippling jokes.

The Baron had all the virtues of the host. He
was not only rich and generous — with that cook
and cellar beyond reproach. In those days to
be a perfect entertainer something more even
than this was required. An agreeable talker, and
a still more agreeable listener, really learned, but
with the most pleasing human weakness for a
little scandal, as easy-going as his mother-in-law
and his wife, entirely simple in manner, with no
faintest touch of pretension or affectation, a hon
vivant in the pleasantest and most harmless sense
of the phrase — who would not delight to have
been among his guests ?

There were generally three or four of them
staying in the house, and sometimes very many
more. Diderot was here often for weeks together,
and sometimes for months. He had a special bed-
room always reserved for him. In d'Holbach's
most intimate confidence, his abundance, fecun-
dity, and inspiration were in piquant contrast to
the Baron's calm learning and well-regulated sense.
Here too came, but not very often, Diderot's
partner in the Encyclopaedia, d'Alembert. Too
shy and retiring to enjoy Grandval's freedom and

D'HOLBACH : THE HOST 125

liveliness as a recreation, d'Alembert's work for
his party was not to be advanced, as his brethren
certainly advanced their work, by speculative talk
in clever company — but always in solitude, in
silence, and in simplicity.

Turgot, like d'Alembert, was from time to time
a guest, but a rare one. Turgot was beginning to
Do, what most of his friends were still discussing
How to do.

Little Galiani skipped down very often from
the Italian Embassy, and the Paris he worshipped,
to amuse the Baron's house-party by telling it those
stories, 'like dramas,' which no one ever found
too long. ' That man is a pantomime from his
head to his feet,' said admiring Diderot, watching
him. After 1761, the heavy Abb^ Morellet, the
would-be refuter of Galiani's wit on the Corn
Laws, was constantly at the Baron's ' developing
my theories on public economy ' to his own great
satisfaction. His audience have not left their
feelings on record.

Grimm, Diderot's dear Damon, was here very
often, with that slightly nauseous affection for
his Pythias, which, said the frankly vain Denis,
made d'Holbach jealous. For jealous, one may
be allowed to read ' disgusted.'

Grimm's chere amie, Madame d'Epinay, some-
times accompanied him. Her sister-in-law.

126 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

Madame d'Houdetot, often drove down to Grand-
val with her superb Marquis de Saint-Lambert
in her train. Pitted deeply with the smallpox,
with a cast in her eye, and a little given to too
much wine, the secret of Madame d'Houdetot's
charm is hard to be found by this generation.
But in that one, it was not only Eousseau who
discovered it to his cost. Saint-Lambert's ' faith
unfaithful kept him falsely true ' to her for so
many years that it came to be considered quite
praiseworthy, and he would have been admitted
to Grandval as Madame d'Houdetot's constant
lover, if his passion for Madame du Chatelet
and his poem on the ' Seasons ' had not given
him the entree as a literary character as well.

His rival, Jean Jacques Eousseau, was also an
habitue at d'Holbach's. The peaceful Baron could
agree even with that fretful child of genius, until
one unlucky day, when, Grandval having suffered
gladly and politely a cure's reading of his own
stupid tragedy, Jean Jacques bounces furiously out
of his armchair, seizes the manuscript from its
author, and throws it to the ground — ' Do you not
see these people are laughing at you ? Go back to
your curacy.* The kindhest and politest of hosts
tries to smooth the ruflBed plumage of both play-
wright and Eousseau. If the cure was appeased
is not a matter of moment. Jean Jacques burst

D'HOLBACH: THE HOST 127

out of the house in a rage, and despite all the efforts
of Grimm and of Diderot, as well as of d'Holbach
himself, never returned to it. 'He imagined all
his misfortunes our doing . . . and thought we
had incited ... all Europe against him,' says
Grimm. He did try, however, to make some
amends to his good host by portraying him in
the 'New Eloisa' in the character of Wolmar —
' benevolent, active, patient, tranquil, friendly,
and trustful.'

Marmontel came here very often: and that
dreadful, garrulous old bore, the Abbe Eaynal,
was constantly to be found seeking ideas among
the Baron's guests for his 'History of the Two
Indies,' which received, and did not deserve, the
advertisement of burning.

The cautious Buffon soon edged away from this
salon^ as he also edged away from the gatherings
of Helvetius. The monstrous things these people
talk about might come to the ears of the authorities
— accompanied by the fact that the politic author
of the ' Natural History ' was among the talkers !
Helvetius himself was often at d'Holbach's, until
the storm of fury and hatred which assailed his
book ' On the Mind ' banished him, astounded and
embittered, to his estates in Burgundy.

Madame Geoffrin, with her prim httle cap tied
under her firm old chin, drove down to play

128 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

picquet with the Baron and to scold Diderot for
neglecting his wife.

It was partly owing to the influence of
Diderot — himself greatly bitten by the Anglomania
just creeping into fashion — that the Baron enter-
tained Englishmen so largely both in Paris and in
the country.

In the years 1762-64-66 Sterne accepted the
hospitality of the host, whom he called ' the great
protector of wits and the sqavans who are no wits,'
to so large an extent that he could say the Baron's
house was as his own. To be sure, d'Holbach's
'joyous sett' must have admirably suited this
Parson Yorick, who had 'no religion but in
appearance,' and a domestic morality very little
better than the worst of the Baron's French
convives.

The ' broad, unmeaning face ' of Hume, the
historian, was sometimes to be seen at d'Holbach's
table, where he found himself for the first time
with thinkers not too narrow, but too emancipated,
for his liking. It was the Baron who, speaking
from experience, warned Hume against nourish-
ing in his bosom a serpent like Eousseau, and
from d'Holbach's house, says Hume's biographer,
Burton, that the story of the famous quarrel
between Hume and Eousseau spread all over
Prance ' in a moment.*

D'HOLBACH: THE HOST 129

David Garrick came to Grandval, and delighted
an age and a company passionately devoted to
histrionic talent. A sprightly Madame Eiccoboni
used to write accounts of d'Holbach's society to
the actor when he had gone back to England ; and
whenever she saw the Baron looked bored or
worried, made that expression a text on which to
moralise on the worthlessness of riches.

The Baron did not often appear anything but
placid, however, and there are very few of his
guests who even hint at anything in himself or his
gatherings which was not smooth and delightful.

Horace Walpole, indeed, talks of 'dull d'Ol-
bach's.* But then Horace was the intimate friend of
Madame du DefFand, who loathed ' les philosophes '
and all their ways and works, and on one occasion
at least was so unlucky as to find himself at one
of the Baron's dinner parties, not only the solitary
Englishman out of a party of twelve, but next to
that tedious Eaynal. 'I dreaded opening my
mouth in French before so many people and so
many servants,' says Horace ; and to avoid being
bored by the ' Two Indies,' he made signs to Eaynal
that he was deaf. After dinner, Eaynal discovered
the trick, and naturally was not pleased.

John Wilkes, with his ugly face, his flaming
past, and his irresistible charm, also sat at the
Baron's cosmopolitan board; as did Benjamin

130 THE FBIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

Franklin, Lord Shelburne, and Priestley — Non-
conformist, chemist, and one of the founders ot
modern scientific criticism.

Some of these people, of course, only dined,
or were merely invited to spend a long day in
the Grandval grounds and gardens; but many
became part of the house party for days, like
Galiani, for weeks, like Grimm, for months, like
Diderot, or for ever, like Father Hoop.

In the forenoon, the guests were left entirely
to their own devices, and unless by special arrange-
ment, never met each other or their host until
dinner-time at half-past one or two. Some of
them had arrived with a chef-d'oeuvre in their
pockets — or, it might be, up their sleeves. Here,
in the pleasant solitude of these morning hours,
Galiani, no doubt, was ' settling the question of the
Corn Laws,' Grimm engrossed with his ' Literary
Correspondence,' and Hoop arranging his pes-
simism into a regular system. (Madame d'Aine
had thoughtfully provided Hoop with a bedroom
overlooking the moat, so that he could at any
moment put his principles into practice and throw
himself into it.) Diderot, beside his open windows
and with the solace of a cup of tea, wrote for
Mademoiselle Volland those descriptions of life at
Grandval to which all narrators of it are indebted.

As for the Baron — the Baron always seemed

D'HOLBACH: THE HOST 131

to have plenty to do in that magnificent library,
where he could invariably find chapter and verse
for the maddest of Diderot's theories, but where
the actual nature of his occupation was known
only to Diderot himself, to a certain very useful
friend called Naigeon, who, having been painter
and sculptor, had finally settled into a philoso-
pher, and to La Grange, the d'Holbach children's
tutor.

It is charitable to suppose that the women
also performed their duties in the morning,
since it is certain they performed none at any
other time of day. But in this age, if a woman
was witty and charming, her metier was con-
sidered to be fulfilled, and she not only did
nothing practical for the good of humanity, but,
better still, never even felt she ought to be doing
something. Madame d'Holbach had her lute and
her embroidery frame, the kindest of clever hus-
bands, those engaging babies, and a perpetual
house party. What more could be expected of
her ? Of Madame d'Aine, it is not recorded
that she had any other role than that of adding to
the gaiety of her household.

At about half-past one, then, the work of the
day was done, and hosts and guests met in the
salon, and went in to dinner — the famous dinner,
exquisitely arranged and appointed; servants

K 2

132 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

numerous, noiseless, and perfectly au fait in their
duties ; the most delicate wines, and the most
irreproachable of chefs. A couple of Englishmen,
perhaps, and half a dozen French men and women
had driven down to it from Paris. There were
generally from twelve to fifteen persons at table,
and sometimes more. Good as the fare was —
much too good for the health of some of the
diners — ' the only intoxication ' at this table ' was
of ideas.'

The talk ranged from the history and customs
of the Chinese to the final annihilation of the
human race. Sometimes it lit on ' Clarissa Har-
lowe,' and the company divided itself into For and
Against Sentiment as understood by the bookseller
Eichardson. Occasionally the meal was given up to
buffoonery, and Madame d'Aine led the way with
jokes of such a character that if Morellet is con-
scientious in declaring in his ' Memoirs ' that all
freedoms, except freedoms as to speculation, were
banished from d'Holbach's gatherings, he must
certainly have been deaf. One day, a story going
the round of the Paris cafes, holds the table
curious and laughing. The Baron, says Grimm,
was as amusingly credulous of gossip as he was
sceptical of everything else. Another day, it is a
question of ton or of mode ; and a third, of art or
of literature.

D'HOLBACH: THE HOST 133

There was scarcely one of d'Holbach's convives
— there was not one of Voltaire's co-operators —
who did not contribute, at one time or another,
a masterpiece, or at least a Book of the Moment,
for d'Holbach's table to discuss.

In 1755, it is the famous article on ' Existence *
in the Encyclopaedia, by young Turgot, our shy,
rare guest, which brings the heads of the older
Encyclopaedists together over the walnuts and the
wine, and inspires them with prophecies of a great
future for its quiet author. Three or four years
later, the great suppression of that Encyclopaedia
itself inflames the passions of the party, goads
Diderot to fury, and d'Alembert to despair.

In 1759, the ' Candide ' of the Master sets the
table in a roar of delight. ' The Social Contract '
of our impossible, impassioned Jean Jacques
sounds for us, in 1762, the trumpet-note of battle
in that sonorous opening sentence : ' Man is born
free, and is everywhere in chains.' The next
year, the guests give their ever-generous admira-
tion to a far wiser work — one of the mightiest
weapons ever forged against ' the greatest of human
curses ' — ' The Treatise on Tolerance.' In 1765,
d'Alembert comes out of his shell again with his
' History of the Destruction of the Jesuits ; ' while
Diderot is for ever finger deep in ink — up to the
neck in ideas.

134 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

Only, at the head of the table, d'Holbach, host
and president, always applauding, encouraging,
(and sometimes also financing) the producers,
himself produces nothing. Yet it is not because
he does not go, as it were, with his guests. He
goes far beyond them. Here, the women of the
party left the table after dinner as they do in
England, to exchange what Diderot called their
'little confidences.' Then the conversation took,
not the kind of freedoms which Morellet declared
he did not hear, but speculative liberties which, said
he, ' would have brought down thunderbolts on the
house a hundred times if they ever fell for that.'

At d'Holbach's table, with d'Holbach pushing,
urging, with a quiet, invincible persistence, with
Diderot waving the flag, leading, pleading, in-
citing, the 'club holbachique' dragged every
dogma, every so-called fact of existence, every
creed, into court before them ; judged by the
tribunal of their own reason, and cast away all
that failed to satisfy it, as fagots for the burning.

Grandval did not speculate, as did Voltaire and
his guests at Ferney, on the attributes of God and
the nature of the Soul. It began where he left
off: asked not. What is God ? but. Is there a God ?
not, What is the Soul ? but. Have we a Soul ? and
in each case answered. No.

Gagged for hundreds of years, Grandval used

D'HOLBACH: THE HOST 18§

the newly seized freedom of thought and speech as
a very Httle later the mob used its social and
political liberty. The bloody extremes of the
Terror, and the speculative extremes of d'Hol-
bach's table, were alike the result of long slavery
and repression.

That d'Holbach at least was strongly and
honestly persuaded of the truth of his own unbelief,
and was convinced that he did well to destroy in
men those faiths which, looking back on history,
he saw were responsible for the intolerable miseries
of religious persecution, is not doubtful. D'Hol-
bach was an honest man. It is true, indeed, that
he was not one of the highest intellectual capacity.
His seems to have been just the kind of clever
mind — much more common among women than
men — which is the dupe of its own cleverness, and
easily led by it into absurdities which both wise
people, and very simple ones, detect and avoid.

Set the problem of deriving Everything from
Nothing, it is not marvellous that the Grandval
talkers descended sometimes to the wildest non-
sense. Horace Walpole said acidly that they soon
turned his head with ' a new system of antediluvian
deluges which they have invented to prove the
eternity of matter. . . . Nonsense for nonsense,
I prefer the Jesuits.' No wonder poor little GaUani
(he was an Abbe, though he very often forgot it)

136 THE FRIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

fled to the more circumspect gatherings of Madame
Geoffrin, that the wise Turgot also turned away
from Grandval, and d'Alembert drew back from
an atheism so positive and arrogant.

By the time the philosophers joined the women
it was four, five, or even six o'clock. It does take
some hours to construct Man and the Universe
out of Chaos, with nothing but blind Force to
help us ! Then came for the host himself, and
some few of the other men of the party, a walk
in the beautiful gardens. Most of the Baron's
guests, however, sat indoors with the women,
Nature and exercise being both greatly out of
fashion in the eighteenth century.

When the walkers returned the evening was
drawing in, and there were lights and cards on the
table. Some of the guests rested on long chairs.
Some played picquet, some billiards, some tric-trac.
Some visited their host's picture gallery or his
famous cabinet of natural history. He was himself
always pleasant, courteous, cheerful. He loved to
rally gently ' the old mummy,' as he called Father
Hoop, and, perhaps, other Fathers, certain Jesuit
priests, whom, in defiance of all his own principles,
he generously made free of his house.

Old Madame d'Aine entertained the whole
company with her perfectly indecorous and per-
fectly good-natured wit. Madame d'Holbach,

D'HOLBACH: THE HOST 187

always ' douce et honnete,' ' tres aimable/ and
exquisitely dressed (the description is Madame
d'Epinay's), accepted her mother's buffooneries
with absolute complacency.

Coarse as this society was in its speech —
worse as it was in its easy condonation of vice
than the worst social sets of our own day —
in one respect at least it was immeasurably
superior. Except for an occasional desultory
game proposed by their hosts, the guests at
Grandval were expected to bring, and did bring,
their own entertainment with them in their own
heads. To be bored would have been to confess
oneself stupid. For the costly freaks of amuse-
ment, the elaborately idiotic devices of modern
times to prevent the visitor having to fall back for
an instant on his own resources or inteUigence,
Grandval had no need. If materialism was its
creed, there was, as has been justly said, a great
deal of ' indirect spiritualism ' in its practice. Its
lengthy dinners were feasts of reason (in spite of
those intellectual extravagances) as well as of
costly meats and wines, and the ill- flavoured jests
were only interludes in the midst of brilliant and
fruitful talk on literature, history, politics, and
the new world beginning for France.

Supper came about nine — 'wit, gaiety, and
champagne,' Diderot described it. Then more

138 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

conversation, until sometimes the party were still
ardently philosophising with their bedroom candle-
sticks in their hands.

When d'Holbach had been entertaining, ap-
parently without a break, for at least ten years, he
took what seemed to his friends the foolhardy, not
to say desperate, resolve of crossing the Channel.
To bury himself in what Diderot called ' the depths
of England' for two months is a very different
thing, the Baron will find, from entertaining English-
men (and those quite the most enlightened of their
species) in Paris ! He did find it so. If England
delighted Voltaire, soothed wounded Helvetius,
and pleased even critical Grimm, she thoroughly
disgusted d'Holbach. He gave Diderot his vivid
first impressions of her, and Diderot retailed them,
red-hot, for Sophie VoUand and for posterity.

The Baron was hospitably received and enter-
tained in this island by a rich and generous host,
whose name has not transpired ; he had the best of
health during his visit, and he paid that visit in
August, when even the British climate can be very
tolerable; he had the pleasure of calling on his
guest, Garrick ; he went to Oxford and Cambridge ;
travelled in some of the prettiest English counties,
and he was bored — to extinction.

Our confessedly bad manners he found worse
than anyone had ever found them before, and

D'HOLBACH: THE HOST 139

was dreadfully disgusted with, people 'on whose
faces one never sees friendliness, confidence, or
gaiety, but which all wear the inscription, " What
is there in common between you and me ? " ' The
aristocracy struck him as cold and haughty, the
common people as rough and violent. As for the
dinner parties, ' where people sit according to their
rank, and formality and ceremony are beside each
guest,' after the gracious ease of Grandval, the Baron
may be forgiven for finding them intolerable.

Then the public entertainments : ' This people
is sad and melancholy, especially in places built
for pleasure. You can hear a pin drop. A hun-
dred stiff and silent women promenade round
an orchestra discoursing the most delicious
music,' and the promenade can only be compared
to ' the processions of the Egyptians round the
mausoleum of Osiris.'

Then the gambling: 'Englishmen lose in-
credible sums in perfect silence. By thirty they
have exhausted all the pleasures, even beneficence.
Ennui . . . conducts them to the Thames, unless
they prefer a pistol.'

At the universities, the good Baron found many
' rich do-nothings drinking and sleeping half the
day;' at Court, corruption; among the people,
no public education and great inequality of riches.
The King, to be sure, was powerful chiefly to do

140 THE FRIENDS OP VOLTAIRE

good, but still he was much the master. With
regard to religion, 'the Christian religion,' said
the Baron, 'is almost extinct in England/ This
was an advantage from his point of view. But
then, though there were innumerable Deists, like
Hume, there was not an atheist, or not an avowed
one. The travelling facilities he praised — there
were always post-horses in plenty; and at the
meals at inns, he found himself ' served promptly,
but with no affability.' It must be owned that
now and again the Baron has us on the hip.

But, after all, there was very great good
in England: it made one so delighted to get
back to France. D'Holbach, who had left
Paris about August 1, 1765, had returned there
by September 20. He dined that same evening
with his dear Diderot and a whole colony of
English, ' who had left their morgue and sadness
on the banks of the Thames.'

Two years after his return, there appeared,
not only to the horror of Court, Church, and
Government, but to the horror of the philosophers
also, a book called ' Christianity Unveiled, or an
Examination of the Principles and Effects of
Eevealed Eeligion.'

It purported to be by a person called Boulanger.
It asserted Christianity to be unnecessary for the
maintenance of law and order ; declared its dogmas

D'HOLBACH: THE HOST Ul

incoherent, its morals fit only to make enthusiasts
and fanatics, and its political results infinitely fatal
and disastrous.

Voltaire fell upon the thing tooth and nail.
' Impiety Unveiled,' he called it. It was not Chris-
tianity, but the perversions of Christianity, with
which he quarrelled. In the margin of his own
copy of the book he wrote criticisms as scathing
as they are brief. That it was both discussed and
condemned at d'Holbach's table, is practically
certain. Galiani at least professed Christianity;
Turgot practised it. There are many men — there
were some even round d'Holbach's board — who,
having themselves relinquished a faith, are yet
greatly averse to hearing that faith blasphemed ;
and who would fain leave for the souls of others
the consolations their reason denies to their own.
D'Holbach, to be sure, would commend the thing.
' A proselytising atheist,' as his friends had long
known him to be — he must approve this daring
effort to make men think as he did.

Soon came talk of other books — from the same
hand it might be — certainly from a hand as bold.
In 1767 appeared a pamphlet called ' The Mind of the
Clergy ; ' in 1768 ' Priests Unmasked,' and ' Portable
Theology.' The last was condemned to be burnt.

Then came whispers of yet another work on. the
same lines, but on a far larger scale, written with an

142 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

even greater daring, with ' the zeal of a missionary
for atheism,' with a passion, a fanaticism, an enthu-
siasm, usually associated with the ' heated pulpi-
teer ' of some narrow sect ; and yet having in it, too,
something of the serenity, the calm and confident
faith of the believer wholly satisfied with his
belief. Who has written it? AM. Mirabaud,
Perpetual Secretary to the French Academy, is to
be the name, it is said, on the title-page. But the
real author ? Diderot, whose Encyclopaedic labours
bring him in touch with all the literary men in
Paris, is impulsively positive that he has not the
slightest idea. Naigeon — Naigeon, the Baron's
factotum — is abroad on some business of the Baron's
and cannot be appealed to. Most of the company
condemn the book unseen. The extremists of the
party are always the worst enemies the party has
to dread. At the head of his table, fingering his
glass thoughtfully, the Baron, with his bene-
volent, leisurely air, is only following his usual
custom in saying little and listening much.

In August 1770, there was published in London
and Amsterdam ' The System of Nature, or The
Laws of the Physical and Moral World,' by Mira-
baud, Perpetual Secretary to the French Academy.

The best kept literary secret in history is the
authorship of the ' Letters of Junius,' for that
remains a secret still. But the Baron d'Holbach's

D'HOLBAGH: THE HOST 143

authorship of ' The System of Nature ' is certainly
among the most piquant concealments in literature.

He had begun by sitting and listening to
criticisms, mostly adverse, on his ' Christianity
Unveiled' and the pamphlets which followed it,
which were all from his pen. Many people start
a literary career under as thick a veil of anonymity.
A few have died still under the disguise. But no
book has ever attracted such howls of rage and
imprecation, such a storm of universal loathing
and opprobrium as did 'The System of Nature,'
while its author sat in perfect peace and comfort,
beloved by all his fellows, safe, unsuspected, and
serene. D'Holbach, said Grimm long after, when
d'Holbach was dead and the secret out, never ran
any danger from his books, save the danger of
being bored by them.

Naigeon, La Grange, and Diderot were in his
confidence. Diderot was more than in it. To
most of the Baron's works — certainly to ' The
System of Nature' — he lent some of the colour
and fire of his genius. Poor Diderot was always
suspect of anything rash and extreme. 'The
System of Nature' was published quite early
in August. On the 10th of that month, Denis
slipped off to Langres and the baths of Bour-
bonne. The Baron went on having dinner parties.
On the 18th, the book was condemned to be burnt.

144 THE FRIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

The Baron continued to dine in peace. Then, as
men read it, and passed it secretly from one to the
other, the murmurs of horror and hatred swelled
to a roar — the roar of the great multitude, always
deafening and terrible. Above it, d'Holbach
heard, close, distinct, and scathing, the bitter
condemnations of his own guests and friends. He
went on dining to that accompaniment.

From Ferney, Voltaire pronounced the work
' a philippic against God ' and ' a sin against
nature ; ' swore it had wrought irreparable harm to
philosophy ; passionately refuted it in his article
on ' God ' in the Philosophical Dictionary ; while
it wrung from him, in a letter to the Due de
Eichelieu, that famous confession ; ' / think it very
good to sustain the doctrine of the existence of a
punishing and rewarding God : society has need
of this opinion.' Galiani declared ' this Mirabaud '
to be ' the Abbe Terrai of metaphysics : he causes
the bankruptcy of knowledge, of happiness, and
of the human mind.' La Harpe called it 'this
infamous book.' Young Goethe said he fled
from it as from a spectre. It caused Frederick
the Great to break with the philosophic party.
Grimm, indeed — but this was after d'Holbach's
death, when it was no longer dangerous to hold
such opinions — praised the purity of its author's
intentions, and the passages of 'imposing elo-

D'HOLBACH: THE HOST 145

quence ' the book contained — though these, he
added, Grimm-hke, ' were by Diderot.'

Who reads ' The System of Nature * now ? It
never was in any sense a great book. But it cer-
tainly was one of the three or four most famous
books of an age richer in them than any other age
in history. It was, after all, simply the logical
outcome, the natural, though the extreme result
of the rationalistic criticism of the fifty or sixty
years which preceded it. The philosophers had
sought to define God. D'Holbach said aloud,
what the fool of David's time said in his heart,
' There is no God.'

In Part I. he disposed of Kings as efiete,
luxurious, war-making, and tyrannical. Then he
expounded his views on Happiness. Men will
never be happy till they are enlightened, and
never enlightened till they have ceased to believe
in a God. Study Nature, and obey Nature's laws
— that is the way to felicity, if way there be.
Then he went on to Mind. All Mind is Matter.
Of Free Will he denied the existence, as twelve
years earlier his friend Helvetius had denied it in
his book ' On the Mind.' Still, even if one cannot
help one's wrong-doing, punishments there must
be, for the good of society ; only such punish-
ments should be reformative and never cruel. In
his protest against torture and the brutahsing

L

146 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

effect of public executions, one sees for a moment
the man behind the book. With regard to the
Immortality of the Soul, since there is no such
thing as soul, it cannot be immortal. The false
doctrine of Hell is useless even as a deterrent
from sin.

Part II. contains what is certainly the most
burning and outspoken attack on the Existence
of God to be found in literature. That there is
a Force behind Matter, I admit. He who does
not admit this, must be a madman. But further
I will not go. As for morality depending on a
belief in a Deity — not at all. Nature bids man do
right as his own best interest. Let each try to
do his utmost for the greatest good of the greatest
number, and there stands established a high and
an unselfish ideal.

Preached, as these doctrines were, in a style
not a little vehement and abundant, with much
Teutonic pomposity and rhetoric, it could soon
be said of d'Holbach that he had ' accommodated
atheism to chambermaids and to hairdressers.'
More learned critics disliked his manner as much
as his matter. 'Four times too many words in
the book,' says Voltaire acidly. But the un-
educated, or the half-educated, prefer both their
oratory and their literature rich and fruity.

Simple and learned alike would, or should,

D'HOLBACH: THE HOST 147

had they known him, have given the author credit
for the certain fact that ' no sordid end, no
personal consideration, attached him to his dismal
system.' If his anonymity shielded him from
danger, it kept from him fame and celebrity too,
and gave him the wholesome, but not soothing,
experience of hearing expressed to his face criti-
cisms of the kind generally only made behind
one's back. He did not gain even the painful
glories of martyrdom ; and had money been an
object to him, by the publication of such works
as his, he can only have lost it.

Long before the tumult ' The System of
Nature ' raised had passed away, the Baron was
busy supplementing it. In 1772 appeared ' Good
Sense, or Natural Ideas opposed to Supernatural
Ideas,' which was a sort of simplification of ' The
System of Nature.' It was burnt. Then appeared
' The Social System,' which tried to establish a rule
of morality totally unfounded on religion. That
was burnt too. Then there was a translation from
Hobbes. The last, or one of the last, of d'Holbach's
pubHshed works was entitled ' Universal Morality,
or the Duties of Man founded on his Nature.'
This appeared in 1776. He had the pleasure of
watching all the bonfires from a distance where
there was not the least danger of scorching.

In 1781 one of his daughters was married.

L 2

148 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

Her father was now fifty-eight years old. Did
philosophy, as Galiani inquired (Galiani had re-
turned to Italy in 1769), still eat at his table
with its old appetite ? Grimm said — in Grimm's
caustic fashion — that the guests fell off somewhat
when the Baron had to retrench his expenses to
establish his children. Some of the convives
had gone before that, to solve for themselves
those questions on a future world, and the
existence of the soul, which they had discussed
so often. In 1771 died Helvetius ; in 1778 Vol-
taire himself. In 1783, d'Alembert, who had in-
deed long ceased to frequent the Baron's society,
or any society, laid down the burden of his life.
In the next year, Diderot, the friend of his heart,
the fruitful inspiration of his work, was called
away from d'Holbach's side for ever.

It must have been with this society, as it
is with all societies at last: the sight of vacant
chairs stops the mirth, and among the living guests
glide others, dear and dead. When one has more
memories than hopes, the time has come to give
up such gatherings. That time came even to
the Host of his generation. By his own fireside
he had to the end the wife he loved. She long
survived him. He had, too, that tranquil and
even disposition which is surely one of the best of
assets — a possession indeed.

D'HOLBACH: THE HOST 149

The Baron was as prudent in the time of his
death as he had been in the conduct of his life.
He died on January 21 of that annus mirahilis,
1789. Five years more, and he would have seen
his own principles enthroned with the Goddess of
Eeason at Kotre-Dame, and as, in part at least,
the consequence of her reign, the streets of Paris
running with blood. Directly after his death, the
secret of his authorship became public property.

It is permissible only to think of d'Holbach
now as his guests and friends thought of him in
life — not as the author of ' The System of Nature '
at all, but as the liberal patron of letters, the best
and kindliest of good, easy men. One may be
permitted to hate as bitterly as Voltaire did the
unreasonableness of his philosophy of pure reason ;
and yet to regard the philosopher with gratitude
and appreciation, as the man who played in the
great intellectual revival of his time one of the
homeliest, yet one of the most necessary of parts.

For d'Holbach provided the rendez-vous.

150 THE FRIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

VI
GRIMM: THE JOURNALIST

The great Encyclopaedia of Diderot and d'Alembert
was to bring light to the people ; the ' Literary-
Correspondence ' of Melchior Grimm was to bring
light to kings. The Encyclopsedia was the con-
ception of those who knew that they were preparing
mighty changes, but who did not live to see them ;
the ' Literary Correspondence ' was the work of a
man whose shrewd eyes foresaw little, but who
lived to see all. The Encyclopaedia is dead, as a
great man dies, having finished his work. The
'Correspondence' — which could not cure those
royal maladies, blindness, ignorance, and hardness
of heart — still lives a gay little life as the most
perfect contemporary record of any literary epoch
in history.

In 1753, the sensibilities of sentimental Paris
were most agreeably touched by the pathetic story
of a young gentleman who, having had his suit
rejected by a charming opera-dancer, Mademoiselle

FREDERIC-MELCHIOR GRIMM.

From an Engraving, after Carmontelle, in the Bibliothdque

Natianale, Paris.

GRIMM: THE JOUENALIST 161

Fel, straightway took to his bed and to a trance in
which he passed whole nights and days, ' without
speaking, hearing, or answering, as if he were dead.'
The Abb6 Eaynal and Jean Jacques Eousseau
constituted themselves his nurses. They were
both too romantic, and too much the children
of their time, to try the common-sense expedient
of leaving the rejected lover severely alone, or of
throwing a bucket of cold water over him. But
when Eousseau saw a smile on the doctor's face
as he left the patient's room, his heart began to
harden a little. And, sure enough, one fine morn-
ing up gets the invalid, dresses, resumes his
ordinary course of life and never again men-
tions his malady to his nurses — even to thank
them.

Frederic Melchior Grimm was, however, no
sentimental fool. He ^ was, indeed, one of the
most keen-witted of his great nation, though, like
many other children of the Fatherland, he had
on the surface of his worldly wisdom a fine layer
of Teutonic sentimentality. If the Briton finds
the sentiment mawkish, not so the Frenchman.
Grimm's extraordinary disease became his pass-
port into the most exclusive circles in Paris.

Born at Eatisbon on September 26, 1723, with
a poor Lutheran pastor for a father, he had always
known that he must make his own way in life, and

152 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

had always made it. At school he found a useful
friend in one of Baron Schomberg's sons, and
continued the friendship at the University of
Leipzig. When he was still a student there, he
wrote a play, ' Banise,' which, before he left, he
was a sufficiently just and astute critic to find
' pitiable.' On leaving Leipzig he went to live in
the Schombergs' house, as tutor to his friend's
younger brother. Frederick the Great had already
made the French language the fashion ; and as at
the Schombergs' Grimm heard nothing else, he
soon learnt to speak and read it. In 1748 came
the first opportunity of his life ; he took his pupil
to Paris, and remained there after the boy had
returned to his family.

To say that Grimm throughout his existence
always fell on his feet, would be a misleading
idiom. He always fell on his head. The moment
he found himself thrown into a new set of circum-
stances, his calm judgment skilfully arranged them
to the very best advantage. At this time he was
twenty-five years old, rather tall and imposing
looking, something of a dandy in his dress (his
enemies declared that he powdered his face and
scented himself like a woman), with very little
money in hand, no prospects, and a retrospect of
that dismal failure ' Banise,' and that ' thin travel-
ling tutorship.' In a very short time he got

GEIMM: THE JOUENALIST 153

himself appointed as reader to the Duke of Saxe-
Gotha. The salary was thin enough here too ;
but the Duke was a great person, and the Duchess
was the friend and the correspondent of Voltaire,
and to be, for the rest of her life, the friend and
correspondent of Melchior Grimm as well. He
was not long in finding a situation much more
lucrative and responsible.

In 1749, he became secretary, guide, and friend
to a certain dissipated young dog of a Comte
de Frise, or Frisen, who was always borrowing
money of his famous uncle, Marshal Saxe, and
certainly needed a prudent Grimm to look after
him.

If Grimm was only, or principally, honest
because honesty is the best policy, if he did his
duty because in the long run duty is the surest
road to happiness, yet the facts remain that he
did act uprightly, and that he had settled prin-
ciples, a strict course of conduct and a strong
line of action, in an age when no motives, good,
bad, or indifferent, produced such happy results
in his friends.

Beneath that veneer of German emotionalism
he was, perhaps, something cold and selfish, stern
and reserved. But if he was never ardent, he was
always faithful ; if he was not generous, he was
just. He occupied in his life many positions of

154 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIKE

great trust and responsibility, and came out of
them all with honour. One can love a Diderot,
but one must needs respect a Grimm.

He had plenty of work to do in Paris. Besides
the impossible task of keeping Frisen in order, he
had his own way and fortune to make and his own
friends to cultivate. His passion for Mademoiselle
Pel was not his only introduction to Parisian society.
Jean Jacques Eousseau (then a brilliant pauper
copying music for his support and dreaming
masterpieces of which he had not yet written a
line) introduced him to d'Holbach and to Madame
d'fipinay. He soon became fast friends with
Madame GeofFrin (to whose tranquil common-
sense his judicious and well-ordered mind par-
ticularly appealed), with Helvetius, and with
Marmontel ; he began a life-long friendship with
Diderot, and once a week at Frisen's house, in the
Faubourg St. Honore, he gave the most delightful
bachelor dinner to his friends, played exquisitely
on the clavecin for their benefit, took their amuse-
ment at his German-French in perfectly good part,
and was entirely witty and agreeable, while keep-
ing always a certain reserve and remaining entirely
master of the situation.

In a very short time the poor German tutor
was one of the most sought after persons in Paris,
feted and petted by all the great people, and minded

GEIMM: THE JOUKNALIST 165

to live no longer as bear-leader to boys, but by
his own head and pen.

His taste for music gave him a golden oppor-
tunity. Shall we have French music at the opera,
or Italian? Paris was as hotly divided on the
question, said Eousseau, as if the affair had been
one of religion. The French side had all the
money, the fashion, and the women, and the Italian
side a very little party of real connoisseurs. Grimm
joined the Italians and wrote on their behalf, in
1753, a pamphlet called ' The Little Prophet of
Boehmischbroda,' in which the style is profanely
imitated from the prophets of the Old Testament.
As Madame de Pompadour was on the French side,
which she protected by force and by summarily
dismissing the Italian singers on the spot, the
pamphlet did no harm to French music; but it
made Grimm famous. Voltaire read it, and asked
how this Bohemian dares to have more wit than
We have ? And this Bohemian, having made so
successful a literary venture in a small part, now
looked round with his clever eyes for a larger one.

In 1754, he travelled for a time with d'Holbach,
who had just lost his wife ; and in the following
year Frisen, whom Grimm's guardianship had not
been able to save from the fatal consequences of
his depravity, died, and left his mentor a free
man.

156 THE FEIENDS OP VOLTAIBE

In 1755 he began what was to be the work of
his Kfe and is his true title to glory, the ' Literary
Correspondence.'

The idea of communicating to the sovereigns
of Europe by letter, news of the literature, science,
and philosophy of Paris, that centre of the world's
cultivation, was not a new one. In limiting the
freedom of the press, sovereigns had limited their
own freedom. Newspapers were official bulletins,
not daring to utter unacceptable truths or un-
palatable opinions on any truths. Kings, as well
as their subjects, yawned over journals of this
kind. So King Frederick the Great originated the
idea of paying an intelligent man in Paris to write
him direct the news and the gossip of the capital.
Theriot, Voltaire's friend, filled the post very
unsuccessfully, and Frederick complained bitterly
that Theriot never had a cold in his head without
scribbling four pages of rodomontade to tell him
about it. La Harpe occupied the same position
to the Czarevitch Paul, and Suard and the Abbe
Eaynal, Grimm's nurse and friend, to the Duchess
of Saxe-Gotha.

The idea was good, but it had been badly
worked out. As Diderot and d'Alembert quickened
into mighty life the little Encyclopaedia of Chambers,
so Grimm breathed vitality into the languishing
' Literary Correspondence.' He saw in it, first of

GEIMM: THE JOURNALIST 157

all, the germ of a great career ; but he saw in it,
too, an influence which, by informing the minds
of kings, might change the destiny of kingdoms.
To teach the people was difficult in those days ;
to teach their rulers was well nigh impossible.
Here, then, was a chance, the one splendid chance,
of showing them the progress of the world, the
ominous advance of knowledge and of the old
order towards the new. Eaynal handed over to
Grimm the correspondence he had established with
the Courts of the north and south of Germany ;
and with this small connection Grimm began his
work.

The ' Literary Correspondence ' remains to-day
the only literary review which has survived the
passage of time, and is still not merely a great
name, but a great living work. The ' Spectator '
and the ' Tatler ' of Addison and Steele are kept
eternally fresh by an exquisite charm of style;
but they rarely aspired to serious criticism, and
are mainly a record of modes and manners, not
of literature or of science. The ' Literary Corre-
spondence ' is as much to-day as on the day it was
written, the guide-book to the letters, the art, and
the drama of the eighteenth century; the open
door to its society and to the mind of cultivated
Paris; a book which is equally indispensable to
the scholar or to the novelist writing of its period,

158 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

and which is certainly both the most instructive
and the most amusing literary compilation extant.

Of no settled length and in manuscript, it was
despatched to its subscribers twice a month. It
had no fixed price, its readers paying as much as
they chose for it, or as much as Grimm could
make them pay. His old friend the Duchess of
Saxe-Gotha was, as has been seen, one of his first
subscribers. The Landgrave of Hesse, the Queen
of Sweden, and Catherine the Great of Eussia soon
joined his select and limited clientele. Stanislas
Augustus, King of Poland, the Margrave of
Anspach, and the Grand Duke of Tuscany joined
later. Frederick the Great, after his unlucky
experience with Theriot, was extremely dilatory
and vacillating in having anything to do with it ;
when he did add his name to the list of subscribers
he never paid his subscription and harried Grimm
to insert the scandals and the on dits of the cafes
and the Court, which Grimm declined to do.

For greater security, the sheets did not go
through the post, but through the legations of
the various countries. The thing was, in fact, a
secret, and a well-kept secret, for more than half
a century, and never knew the danger of print
until it was published in 1812, under the Empire,
with many cautious Napoleonic omissions. In the
meantime, its secrecy and the limited number of

GRIMM: THE JOURNALIST 159

its readers gave the discreet Grimm, who declared
that the most enlightened reasoning was not worth
a night in the Bastille, and who was cautious to
the very fibre of his bones, the opportunity of
being at once candid, impartial, and safe.

He set forth a flaming prospectus, promising
an 'unlimited truthfulness.' The sheets shall be
' dedicated to confidence and frankness ! ' They
were. To those distant Courts and Kings there
went forth every fortnight the inimitable criti-
cisms of the most bold, just, and cool critic
who ever breathed. He not only analysed, with
extraordinary brilliancy and fairness, the writings
of Voltaire, of friend Eousseau, and of Bufibn, but
he sat in discerning judgment on the works of
English novelists and poets. He criticised books
which have not lived, in criticisms which are
undying. As to the value and the longevity of
the productions, he was sometimes, naturally and
inevitably, mistaken ; but as a rule his opinions
have been confirmed by posterity and have
weathered the test of time.

He also described to his readers the condition
of the drama, the plots of the plays, the art of the
players. Of course he was clever enough if the
season was rather a dull one, to fill out his pages
with extracts from a tragedy or from a novel;
sometimes, it is said, the ingenious man gave

160 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

quotations from works which had never been
written.

He dealt with medical questions, and did
not think it beneath his dignity to examine the
merits of a mouth-wash. He wrote many pages
on Tronchin, the great physician, and on inocu-
lation. Here, surely, was one of the chances to
enlighten kings — kings who, more than any other
class of men, suffered and died from the ignorant
tyranny of their physicians, and who had to wait
eighteen centuries before any man told them that
fresh air was a valuable property, and health a
kingdom to be taken by temperance, soberness,
and chastity.

If there was a scientific marvel in the air, such
as ventriloquism, why, of course, Grimm must tell
his correspondents about that ; and the music,
French or Italian, of the capital, must also receive
its comment. Then there was the news of the
day, and of Academical disputes, and, though
Grimm had declared he would not report them,
occasional piquant anecdotes with a sufficient spice
of scandal in them to have pleased King Frederick.

He further drew pen-portraits of celebrities.
Nothing could be more fair and shrewd than
Grimm's character- sketches. He solves in them
the supreme difficulty — how to be at once honest
and charitable.

GEIMM: THE JOUENALIST 161

Next there is an epigram to be reported. While
a charade that has amused a Parisian fine lady is
surely good enough for a German duchess !

Politics were supposed to be excluded, and
they were excluded in the sense that there were
no remarks on public events until those events had
become so notorious that the ' Correspondence ' did
not add to its readers' knowledge of them. But
though, or because, he wrote for governors, Grimm
adduced his theories on government, he himself
believing in the divine rights neither of the 'Social
Contract ' nor of kings. To his views on tole-
rance, finance, and education, he gave utterance
soberly, thoughtfully, and at length. He had a
subscription list in his paper for Voltaire's unfor-
tunate proteges, the Calas ; and if his pen was to
flow freely, as he had promised, how could he
stay his indignation against the trial and the sacri-
fice of the Chevalier de la Barre ?

To the friend and intimate of the philosophers,
the most ordinary event suggested philosophical
reflections. His religious views could hardly help
appearing ; but Grimm's was a quiet agnosticism,
and had nothing in common with the excited cer-
tainties of Diderot's unbelief. He had, of course,
his theories on women, on art, and on languages ;
and he aired them all. He brought out, in the
same tantalising fashion in which serials are now

M

162 THE FEIENDS Oi' VOLTAIRE

produced in weekly illustrated newspapers, Dide-
rot's two novels.

He was himself not only the first critic of his
day, but he was thinker as well as chronicler,
worldling and scholar, reporter and savant.
Foreigner though he was, he had learnt to write
the French language in a style inimitably clear,
supple, and forcible. His command of irony alone
should have been a fortune to him. Add to this,
his singularly wise, calm head, and his unrivalled
position as the friend of the women of the salons
and the nobility of Paris as well as of its writers
and politicians. Further, this critic of music was
himself a musician, this judge of authors him-
self an author. He lived in one of the most
momentous and thrilling periods in the history
of this earth, and in one of the most stimulating
of her cities, and was able to write wholly with-
out fear of consequence for readers of whose
intelligent interest he was sure, while he had ever
before him the magnificent hope of so opening the
hearts and feeding the knowledge of those readers
that they might turn and do good unto their people
and be a blessing, and not a curse, to their lands.

Consider all this, and it is not marvellous
that Grimm remains the first journalist and the
* Literary Correspondence ' the first newspaper in
the world.

GEIMM: THE JOURNALIST 163

It is hardly necessary to say that it gave its
editor an enormous amount of work. Chaise de
paille, his friends called him in allusion to his dili-
gence; later, when he began to travel, Grimm
suggested the nickname should be altered to chaise
de paste. He had many secretaries working under
him. One, Meister, was attached to him all his
life, and benefited largely under his will. When
he was away from Paris the good-natured Diderot
made a brilliant substitute ; and Madame d'fipinay
took up a delicate pen to become the first, and
surely the most charming, of women journalists.

Only a few months after his arrival in Paris
Grimm had been introduced to this little black-
eyed, bright-witted, and all too seductive wife of
a worthless husband. In 1752, at Frisen's table,
he had heard her name insulted, and had fought
a duel for its honour. By 1755, on his return
from his journey with d'Holbach, he became a
familiar figure in her salon. First her wise and
masterful friend, he was soon her despotic lover.

It is always a vexed point of morals to deter-
mine how far right can come out of wrong, how
far a cause initially bad can be said to be good
in its results. It must certainly be conceded in
Grimm's case that, having put himself into a false
position and remaining there, he acted not only
sensibly and discreetly, but even honestly and

M 2

164 THE FBIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

conscientiously. He found Madame d'Epinay
silly, as are so many clever women, and he in-
sisted on her behaving with judgment and dis-
cretion. One of his first acts was to demand that
her old lover, Francueil, whom she still permitted
to visit her as a friend, should be given his dis-
missal. With Duclos, man of letters, and of
character rough, dissipated, and unscrupulous,
he bade her break entirely. Then he turned to
Eousseau.

It has been justly said of Grimm that he never
lost a friend save Jean Jacques. In 1756 Madame
d'Epinay, acting on one of those excessively foolish
impulses which she herself felt to be wholly fasci-
nating, and which had already more than once
shipwrecked her life, gave Eousseau the little
Hermitage in the forest of Montmorency, close to
her own country-house of La Chevrette.

Grimm had not known Eousseau for six years
without knowing his heart. He looked up suddenly
from the ' Correspondence.' ' You have done Eous-
seau a bad service,' he told Madame d'fipinay
sternly, ' and yourself a worse.' Still, it was done.
In 1757, that belle laide, Madame d'Houdetot, also
had a house close to La Chevrette, and there
attracted the notice of Eousseau. After a brief
summer day of dehght, she grew tired of her
vehement admirer, or her lover, Saint-Lambert,

GEIMM: THE JOUKNALIST 166

grew tired of him for her. At any rate, there
burst over those three houses in the Montmorency
forest a storm of fierce passions and scandal-
ous recriminations. All Paris stood watching.
Diderot plunged impulsively into that angry sea.
Eousseau accused Madame d'fipinay, in terms
which no self-respecting woman could have for-
given, of being the writer of a certain fatal anony-
mous letter ; and she forgave him. Grimm had
been appointed secretary to the Duke of Orleans,
and was absent on duty in Westphalia. He did
not spare his little mistress's pusillanimous weak-
ness. ' Your excuses are feeble . . . you have
committed a very great fault,' he wrote. Hurry-
ing home, he dealt with Eousseau in terms of un-
mistakable plainness. He made Madame d'Epinay
cast him off there, at once, and for ever, and
carried her off to Geneva on the excuse, a just
excuse in every sense, of her health.

But the consequences of her folly were not
ended. Eousseau defamed her character in the
' Confessions,' and in that unique masterpiece of
scurrility he speaks of Grimm as ' a tiger whose
fury increases daily.' Diderot declared that Jean
Jacques made him believe in the existence of the
devil and of hell. But Grimm wrote an obituary
notice of Eousseau in his 'Correspondence' of
admirable justice and moderation, and spoke of

166 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

him as ' embittered by sorrows which were of his
own making but not the less real,' and as ' a soul
at once too weak and too strong to bear quietly
the burden of life.' It must be allowed that
Grimm could be magnanimous.

Having saved Madame d'Epinay from her
friends, it remained to him to save her from herself.
At Geneva he put her under the care of the great
and good Tronchin, and made her write for the
' Correspondence.' He helped her to manage the
miserable remains of the fortune her husband's
mad extravagance had left her, supervised the
education of her children, and even showed her
the harm she did them by speaking disrespectfully
of their father. His love was not fervent, perhaps,
but it corrected her follies and her weakness, and
made her do and be her best. It had at least some
of the tokens of a good and honourable feeling.

These visits to Geneva were undoubtedly the
happiest time in her life. On this first one, which
lasted eight months, from February to October
1759, she and Grimm often saw and talked with
Voltaire ; and Grimm greatly appreciated the
society of the solid and sensible Genevans and the
cultivated Tronchins. Mademoiselle Fel came to
stay with Voltaire at Les Delices, and when Grimm
saw her there he proved convincingly the truth
that 'the man's love, once gone, never returns.'

GEIMM: THE JOUENALIST 167

But his real passion was not even for Madame
d'Epinay. His dominant taste was his ambition ;
his dearest mistress, his career.

Already secretary to the Duke of Orleans, on
the last evening of his stay at Geneva, he heard
the satisfactory news that he was made Envoy
for Frankfort at the Court of France. True, M.
rArnbassadeur, as Diderot called him, soon lost his
post by joking in a despatch at the expense of an
official person; but none the less he was rising
in the world. Presently he was busy settling
M. d'Epinay 's bankruptcy and helping Madame to
arrange a satisfactory marriage for her daughter.
Tyran le Blanc he was called by her and her
circle. But, after all, no woman is happy till she
has met her master. Well for her if she find one
as I'udicious and upright as Melchior Grimm.

He was less with her as the years went by,
though not in any sense less faithful. In 1762
the Duchess of Saxe-Gotha appointed him her
charge d'affaires ; and when she died her husband
made him Councillor of Legation, with a pension.

He met Frederick the Great when he was
travelling in Germany in 1769 ; and Frederick,
forgetting his grievance that Grimm would not
turn the ' Correspondence ' into a scandalous
society newspaper, fell under the spell of his
fellow-countryman's encyclopasdical knowledge

168 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

and dignified affability. Grimm, said Meister, had
the rare talent of living with great people without
losing any of the freedom and independence of his
character.

When he was nearly fifty years old, in 1771,
he resumed an employment of his youth, and, at
a very large salary, consented to be tutor to the
Hereditary Prince of Hesse, a boy about nineteen.
The pair went to England and were well received
at its ultra-German Court. Grimm was delighted
with ' the simplicity, the naturalness, and the good
sense ' of the English character. The Landgravine,
young Hesse's mother, sold her diamonds that her
son might prolong his visit in so delightful a
country. And then Grimm brought him back to
Paris and formed his mind and manners in the
society of d'Holbach and Diderot, of Madame
Necker and Madame Geoffrin.

In 1773, tutor and pupil went to St. Petersburg
to attend the marriage of Wilhelmina, the Prince
of Hesse's sister, with the Czarevitch Paul. In a
very short time the skilful Grimm had gained the
great Catherine's interest and consideration. Even
Diderot's warm heart and glowing genius (he was
staying at the Eussian Court when Grimm arrived
there) did not win her so well as the German's
delicate tact and keen perceptions. Herself before
all things a great statesman, how should she not

GRIMM: THE JOURNALIST 169

respect the shrewd judgment, the strength, and
the determination of a Grimm ? It is so rare to
be clever and wise! It was most rare in the
eighteenth century. Two or three times a week
'Grimm dined with her Majesty en petit comite —
those dinners at which all men were equal, and at
which no servants appeared to hamper the conver-
sation. Afterwards she talked alone with him by
the hour together. He told Madame Geoffrin
how, when he left her, he would pace his room all
night with the splendid ideas she had suggested
coursing through his sleepless brain : ' The winter
of 1773-74 passed for me,' he said, 'en ivresse
continuelle' But when Catherine would have
permanently attached him to her service, his stern
good sense helped him to refuse. There is no such
dead- weight on genius as a post at Court — ^be it the
Court of a Catherine or a Frederick — and Grimm
knew it. ' I have never seen you hesitate about
anything,' Madame d'Epinay had once written to
him ; ' when you have once decided with your
just, strong mind, it is for ever.'

His refusal was unalterable, and he returned to
Paris. He was sure enough of his firmness to visit
his royal friend again, two years later, in 1776.
He had been acting tutor once more, to the two
Counts EomanzofF this time. He had taken them
to Naples to embrace Galiani, to Ferney to see

170 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

Voltaire, and to Berlin to see Frederick. They
arrived in Petersburg in time for the second
marriage of the Czarevitch, of whose first marriage,
with Wilhelmina of Hesse, Grimm had been the
principal promoter. Catherine received him with
the same flattering interest and offers, but he was
as deaf to them as before. Then she gave him
the title of Colonel — to the intense amusement of
King Frederick — and appointed him her general
agent in Paris at a salary of ten thousand livres.

After his return to the capital this appoint-
ment formed a very large occupation in his life.

His frequent absences had naturally not been
the best thing in the world for the ' Literary
Correspondence,' but it would have been a much
worse thing if Diderot — Grimm's 'patient milch-
cow whom he can milk an essay from or a volume
from when he lists ' — had not been there to do his
work. The ' Correspondence ' rightly appears with
Diderot's name as well as Grimm's on its title-
page. In these latter years, indeed, its readers
often had to be content, not with Diderot, but
with a mere Meister ; and when Grimm did write
himself it was sometimes carelessly and in a
hurry. Not quite the first, or the last, perhaps,
to commit that literary enormity, he occasionally
reviewed books he had not taken the trouble to
read.

GEIMM: THE JOUENALIST 171

His letters to and from Catherine, after the
first few years, were not conveyed through the
post, but by special messenger, and are therefore
delightfully outspoken. Grimm's contain indeed
a good deal of flattery and exaggeration; but
Catherine's are spontaneous enough. She used
to say she was as 'frankly an original as the
most determined Englishman.' The pair wrote
sometimes in French and sometimes in German.
They had nicknames for most of the crowned
heads in Europe. Of ' Brother George of England '
Catherine had always spoken with contempt, and
considered his loss of the American colonies as ' a
State treason.' But much of the correspondence
was devoted to mere homely details. As her agent,
Grimm bought the imperial rouge for the imperial
cheeks, pictures, books, and bon-bons. He took
long journeys in her interest : he supplied her with
architects when she caught a fever for building ;
and presently, having been discreet matchmaker
for the Hesses and the Czarevitch, he was com-
missioned to play the same delicate part for the
Czarevitch's daughters.

He was living now in the Eue de la Chauss^e
d'Antin. His love of music was still strong, and
on young Mozart's visits to Paris, Grimm was his
kindest and most influential patron. The next
few years saw the deaths of many old friends —

172 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

of Voltaire, of Diderot, of Frederick the Great, of
d'Holbach, and of Madame d'Epinay. For ever
trying to conciliate all men, poor little volatile,
self-deceived deceiver, under Grimm's masterful
influence the best qualities of her nature had
come to the fore and the worst receded. She was
to the last true to him as she had never been
true to anyone else. Grimm adopted her grand-
daughter and married her to the Comte de Bueil.

So far, his own life had been singularly happy
and successful. If he had loved unwisely, he had
taken care that the affection should never be of
that inordinate kind which is its own punishment.
He had, too, one of the dearest solaces of declin-
ing life in seeing young people growing up about
him. As to his career, he was not only attached
to the royal house of Orleans, but he was by now
Catherine's Councillor of State, Minister Pleni-
potentiary to the Duke of Saxe-Gotha, and Baron
of the Viennese Empire. He was a rich man,
with a fine collection of books, pictures, and vertu.
He should have died before 1789.

In that year came the stunning fall of the
Bastille. Of liberty, Grimm had talked easily
enough, but he had also been shrewd enough to
doubt its promises. He had at least nothing of
the calm confidence of the fine ladies of the old
regime who drove out from modish Paris through

GEIMM: THE JOUBNALIST 173

the Faubourg Saint- Antoine to look at the ruins of
the great prison, as at a sight prepared — for their
amusement. To the wary German the destruction
of the Bastille spelt the ruin of France. The
Eevolution sped on — Vengeance rushing through
the night with a drawn sword in her hand.

In 1790 came the great emigration of the nobles.
Who should be suspect if not this correspondent
of kings? Grimm fled to Frankfort; but in two
months' time he plunged again into the whirlpool of
Paris, to rescue the Comtesse de Bueil, his dear
adopted grandchild, then in sore straits. He took
her to Aix-la-Chapelle ; but in October 1791 he
returned himself to the capital, to get the Empress's
letters out of France if he could. He found he had
already been denounced in the committees as
carrying on a correspondence with her ' little favour-
able to the Eevolution.' His only chance of safety
lay, he saw, in ' extreme circumspection.' He had
that quality by nature to the full ; but, none the
less, stirred by a generous pity, history tells of an
interview he had with the royal saint, Madame
Elisabeth, in which he tried to assist both her and
Marie Antoinette. He could do nothing ; fate and
the fatal Bourbon character were too strong for the
Bourbons to be saved.

In 1792 Grimm, who had loved her long and
owed her much, said farewell to Paris for ever,

174 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

leaving behind him, as he said, the fruit of the
wisdom of his whole life and his entire fortune, and
finding himself as naked as when he came into
the world. He and Madame de Bueil lodged over
a chemist's shop in Dusseldorf, and even had to
sleep in the Natural History Museum of that town.
Grimm's whole income was Catherine's pension of
two thousand roubles ; her generosity indeed often
added to it, and in 1796 she made him Eussian
Minister at Hamburg. This was one of the last
acts of her life. She died, and left her friend and
servant yet the poorer for her loss.

At Hamburg he had a disease of the eye which
necessitated its removal. Then he retired to Gotha
and lived with the Comtesse de Bueil in a house
given him by the Duke of Saxe-Gotha, the munificent
Duke providing furniture, linen, kitchen utensils —
everything. The Countess's two young daughters
acted as Grimm's secretaries. The music he had
loved was still a resource to him, and he seems to
have kept to the last something of his old power
and mastery over others. Goethe found him, when
he saw him in 1801, still an agreeable man of the
world and rich in interest and experience, but
unable to conceal a profound bitterness at the
thought of his misfortunes. Under the Directory
some of his confiscated property was restored to
him. But it could hardly benefit him; he no

GRIMM: THE JOURNALIST 175

longer lived, he only existed. He, who had been
born when the Kegent Orleans ruled France and
the old order was at the supreme height of its
magnificence and depravity, was roused from the
dotage of his last days to hear the thunder of the
cannon of Jena and Austerlitz, or the story of the
peace concluded between Catherine's grandson,
Alexander, and Napoleon Bonaparte upon the raft
at Tilsit.

Grimm died on December 19, 1807, aged
eighty-four.

No unpleasing contrast, this ' methodical,
adroit, managing man,' with his cold uprightness
and steady prudence, to a reckless, out-at-elbows
Diderot, or a mad, miserable Eousseau. Thrifti-
ness and caution are uin-omantic virtues and
even accounted selfish ; but, after all, the world
would have no beggars to relieve if every man
laid by for himself.

If it was the Encyclopaedists' mission to teach
the people to reform their kings, it was Grimm's
to teach those kings to reform themselves — to be
as careful and judicious as he was. He tried ; but
from long and close association with them he him-
self caught at last that disease epidemic among
rulers — oblivion to unpleasant consequences and a
relentless future — and never recovered from the
fearful shock which opened his eyes at last.

176 THE FEIENDS OP VOLTAIRE

VII
HELVilTIUS: THE CONTRADICTION

Most of the reforming philosophers of the eight-
eenth century were better in word than deed.

Helvetius wrote himself down self-seeker and
materialist, and in every action of his life gave his
utterance the lie. Helvetius was, as Voltaire had
been, a courtier — not the teacher of kings, like
Grimm, but their friend and servant. Helvetius
alone was at once of that body, which of all bodies
the philosophers most hated, the Farmers-General
— the extortionate tax-gatherers of old France —
and of a practical philanthropy Voltaire himself
might have envied.

He belonged to a family famous in the medical
profession. His great-grandfather, a religious
refugee from the Palatinate, had been a clever
quack, practising in Holland. His grandfather
introduced ipecacuanha to the doctors of Paris,
and his father, having saved Louis XV. 's life in
some childish complaint, was made physician to
the Queen and Councillor of State. Still, the

C^ A lJEi;^/Ii:Ti.TJS

I'irlfirJ .V JmI,-

1„^ LS'.^An«.ai

CLAUDE-ADRIEN HELVETIUS.
From an Engraving by St. Aubin, after the Portrait by Vanloo.

HELVETIUS: THE CONTRADICTION 177

family fortunes were but mediocre. Little Claude-
Adrien, who was born in 1715, was at first edu-
cated at home by a mother ' full of sweetness and
goodness.' Her tenderness, perhaps, was an ill
preparation for the harsher, wider world of the
famous school of Saint Louis-le-Grand, whither
Claude-Adrien was presently sent. It was Vol-
taire's old school, and it was Voltaire's old school-
master, Pere Poree, who helped the shy, sensitive,
new boy with kindliness and encouragement, and
first roused in him a love of letters. Grimm, who
nearly always has his pen pointed with malice
when he writes of Helve tins, records that poor
Claude-Adrien always seemed stupid at school
through being the victim of a chronic cold in the
head : an unromantic afiliction, which would make
genius itself uninteresting. Young Helvetius was
no genius, however.

After leaving school he was sent to an uncle,
who was a superintendent of taxes at Caen, to
learn finance. There he wrote the usual boyish
tragedy of promise — never to be performed —
and the usual youthful verses, and was made a
member of the Caen Literary Academy. The
sensitive shyness soon disappeared. Young,
healthy, and handsome, loving literature much
and women more, an excellent dancer and fencer,
clever, cool, agreeable, and much minded to get

178 THE FKIENDS OF VOLTAIEB

on in the world, young Helvetius comes up to Paris.
At three-and-twenty, in 1738, being the son of his
father, and having the necessary financial equip-
ment, he was made Farmer-General, a post certain
to bring in two or three thousand a year, and
possibly, with the requisite extortion and un-
scrupulousness, a good deal more.

Paris, in the years between 1738 and 1751,
was certainly the most delightful and the most
seductive city in the world. In the early part of
that period, Madame de Tencin, the mother of
d'Alembert and the sister of the Cardinal, was
forming the youth of the capital in her famous
salon. In the later period, Madame de Pompadour
was revealing to it by her example the whole secret
of worldly success — a clear head and a cold heart.
The Court was eternally laughing, play-acting, in-
triguing. For the few, the world went with the live-
liest lilt ; and for the many — the many were dumb.

Helvetius was one of the few. Now at Madame
de Tencin's, ' gathering in order that he might
one day sow ; ' now in the foyer of the Comedie,
where Mademoiselle Gaussin, the charming comic
actress, nourished a hopeless passion for him ; now at
the opera, seeing for the first time BufFon, Diderot,
d'Alembert, and joining hotly in the question of
French or Italian music, which agitated the capital
a thousand times more than national glory or

HELVfiTIUS: THE CONTRADICTION 179

shame ; now at Madame de Pompadour's famous
little dinners of the Entresol, or at Court, daintily
distinguishing between the Queen of reality and
the poor Queen en titre — the new young Farmer-
General was Everywhere where Everybody who is
Anybody goes, and Nowhere where Nobody goes.
Be sure there was a fashionable shibboleth then as
there is now, and be sure Helvetius prattled it and
lived up to it. Grimm declared that if the word
* gallant ' had not been in the French language, it
would certainly have had to be invented in order
to describe him.

One day, society heard of him dancing at the
opera under the mask of the famous dancer, Dupre.
The next, he was whispered to be the lover of a
modish Countess, who had taken Atheism as other
women took Jansenism, Molinism, or a craze for
little dogs, and passionately imbued her lover with
the exhilarating doctrine of All from Nothing to
Nothing. Then he posed as the amant-en-titre ot
the Duchesse de Chaulnes. For the passions were
only a pose — like the opera dancing. Helvetius
was merely minded to get on in the world, and was
looking about for the shortest cut to glory. He
soon saw, or thought he saw, a pleasant road
thereto called Verse.

Voltaire, now retired to Cirey, science, and
Madame du Ch^telet, had made poetry the fashion.

K 2

180 THE FRIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

I too will be a poet ! The young Farmer-General
racked his sharp brains a little, and as a result
sent Voltaire some long, dismal cantos on ' Happi-
ness/ The master repHed with the kindliest criti-
cism, and offered advice so keen and excellent that
if poets were made, not born, Helvetius' verses
might still live. But, after all, advice by post is
always unsatisfactory. Helvetius' Farmer-Gene-
ralship made periodical tours in the provinces an
agreeable necessity. On a journey through Cham-
pagne, what more natural than to stop awhile at
Cirey, where Voltaire was writing ' Mahomet,' and
Madame du Chatelet was the most delightful of
blue-stocking hostesses ? Between Arouet of five-
and-forty and Claude- Adrien of five-and- twenty
a warm friendship was cemented. All Voltaire's
correspondence from 1738 until 1771 is studded
with letters to Helvetius. The young man was
his ' very dear child,' ' my rival, my poet, my
philosopher.' If he took so large and liberal a
view of Helvetius' talents as to declare that, as
a poet, he had as much imagination as Milton,
only more smoothness and regularity (!), yet he
was not afraid to wrap up the pill of many a
shrewd home truth in the fine sugar-plums of
compliments.

But, after all, is poetry the easiest way to
glory ? Claude-Adrien, returned to Paris, walking

HELV:6TIUS: the CONTEADIGTION 181

through the Tuileries gardens one day, saw the
hideous Maupertuis, the geometrician, surrounded
by all the charming and pretty women, adoring
him, and immediately decided to abandon verse
and be a geometrician instead. But before he had
taken a couple of steps in this direction, the
publication of the 'Spirit of Laws' in 1748
electrified Europe, and changed his mind. To
be sure, when, three years earlier, Montesquieu
had brought the book up to Paris and asked the
young Farmer-General's judgment on it, Helvetius
had replied that it was altogether unworthy of
the author of the 'Persian Letters,' and had
strongly recommended him not to publish it.
Well, that advice can be conveniently forgotten.
Helvetius paid Montesquieu the sincerest of all
flattery by resolving on the spot to be a philo-
sopher himself.

If, between these eventful years of three-and-
twenty and six-and-thirty, Helvetius had been
nothing but an astute, ambitious young man-
about-town, seeking the likeliest way to fame and
fortune, he would have been undistinguishable
from hundreds of others around him, and not
worth distinguishing. But, at his worst, there
was something in him which was never in that
selfish crowd which thronged the galleries of
Versailles.

182 THE FBIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

As tax-gatherer, it was his interest and pro-
fession to extract the uttermost farthing — and he
did not do it. Nay, he pleaded in high places for
the wretches it was his business to ruin. When in
Bordeaux they rebelled against an iniquitous new
tax on wine, he encouraged the rebellion. Though
he was constantly at Court and in a position
which entailed lavish personal expenditure, he
pensioned Thomas, the poet, out of his own
pocket ; and by an annuity of a thousand ecus
opened the world of letters to Saurin, hereafter
the dramatist. The Abbe Sabatier de Castres
declared himself to have been the recipient of
his delicate and generous charity. Marivaux, the
novelist and playwright, who was personally very
uncongenial to Helvetius, received from him a
yearly sum of two thousand livres.

It was in Helvetius' house in Paris, as he
afterwards told Hume, the historian, that he con-
cealed, coming and going for ' nearly two years,'
Prince Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, at a
time ' when the danger was greater in harbouring
him in Paris than in London ' on account of the
clause in the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle of the year
1748, which stipulated that France should shelter
no member of the family in her domains. Hel-
vetius, hke many another generous dupe, fell a
victim to the Stuart grace and charm : ' I had

HELV:fiTIUS: THE CONTRADICTION 183

all his correspondence pass through my hands ;
met with his partisans upon the Pont Neuf;
and found at last I had incurred all this danger
and trouble for the most unworthy of all mortals,'
for a poor coward who ' was so frightened when
he embarked on his expedition to Scotland ' that
he had literally to be carried on board by his
attendants. (It is fair to say that Helvetius made
this statement only on the testimony of a third
person whose name is not given.) The sole good
quality, indeed, his host ended by finding in this
faint hope of Britain, the guest for whom he had
risked his safety and spent his money, was that he
was ' no bigot.' As this meant he had ' learnt a
contempt of all religions from the philosophers in
Paris,' not everyone would consider even this an
advantage.

In 1740, Madame de Grafiigny, famous as the
gossiping visitor at Cirey with whom Voltaire and
Madame du Chatelet quarrelled, had arrived in
Paris, and there, in the Eue d'Enfer, near the
Luxembourg, had set up her salon. To insure
its success, Madame, who was five-and-forty, fat
and unbeautiful, had with her a charming niece,
Mademoiselle Anne Catherine de Ligniville, who
was then one-and-twenty, fair, handsome, intelli-
gent. A year or two before, her aunt had adopted
and so rescued her from a convent, to which the

184 THE FRIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

fact of the unfortunate girl having nineteen living
brothers and sisters had condemned her.

In 1747, Madame de Graffigny attained celebrity
by her ' Letters from a Peruvian.' Turgot did her
the honour of criticising them : frequented her
5a/(>7z, which rapidly became famous, and at which,
in 1750, Helvetius, still young, rich, agreeable,
and unmarried, became a constant visitor. For a
year, he was there perpetually. ' The sheepfold
of hel esprit^' people called it. Helvetius liked to
be thought a hel esprit, and it was de rigueur
to admire the hostess's 'Peruvian' and her play
' C^nie,' which was produced in 1750. He soon
came to admire something besides her writings.
' Minette,' as she nicknamed her niece, was such a
woman as fashionable eighteenth-century society
rarely produced — such a woman as any fashion-
able society rarely produces. Strong in mind and
body, good, straightforward and serene, refresh-
ingly unconventional in an age which had no god
but the convenances, not half so clever as that
accomplished old fool, her aunt, and a hundred
times more sensible — such was Mademoiselle de
Ligniville,

Helvetius studied her in his calm manner for a
year, and at the end of it proposed to her. Then
he resigned his Farmer-Generalship with its rich
income ; bought, to pacify his father, the post of

HELV:6tIUS: the CONTBADICTION 185

maitre d'hotel to Queen Marie Leczinska, and the
estates of Vore and Lumigny in Burgundy, and,
on June 17, 1751, married Mademoiselle de Ligni-
ville, who was a Countess of the Holy Eoman
Empire, satisfactorily connected with the nobility,
and had not a single franc to her dot.

All these actions caused something very like
consternation in the world in which Helvetius
lived. Give up a Farmer-Generalship ! The man
must be mad ! ' So you are not insatiable, then,
like the rest of them ? ' says Machault, the Con-
troller-General. As to the estates in Burgundy,
one might as well be buried alive at once !
While to marry a woman who is by now certainly
not a day less than two-and-thirty, has not an ecu,
and has a tribe of hungry brothers and sisters
clinging to her, as it w^ere, is certainly not the act
of a sane person ! Followed by the mingled pity
and contempt of all Paris, Helvetius and his wife
left immediately for Vore, and settled down to the
eight happiest years of their lives.

Vore was one of those country estates which
would still be called dull. In those days, before
railways, with a starving peasantry at its gates,
with rare posts of the most erratic description,
and with the vilest impassable roads between one
country house and another, it might have been
called not merely dull, but dismal. But, after

186 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIBE

all, happiness is what one is, not where one is.
Perfectly content with each other, the Helvetius
would have been contented in a wilderness.
Minette, says a biographer, asked nothing better
than to adore her husband and perpetually to
sacrifice herself to him.

If it was not in his calmer nature to adore
anyone, his love for her is on the testimony of the
whole eighteenth century. His married happi-
ness 'bewildered and astonished' it. 'Those
Helvetius,' said a country neighbour discon-
tentedly, ' do not even pronounce the words,
my husband^ my wife, my child, as we others
do.' 'Good husband, good father, good friend,
good man,' wrote unfavourable Grimm. The
easy prosperity of Helvetius' love for his wife, its
freedom from storm and stress, left it, doubtless,
a lighter thing than if it had been forged in the
fire and beaten by the blows of affliction and re-
verse. It was thus with all his qualities. Kind,
rather than lovable ; charming, rather than great ;
equable, because nothing in his destiny came to
move the deep waters, or because there were no
deep waters to be moved: these were the key-
notes to Helvetius' character.

The first child of the marriage, a daughter,
was born in 1752, and the second, also a
daughter, in 1754. Father and mother devoted

HELVETIUS: THE CONTEADICTION 187

tliemselves to the education of the little girls,
though in their time polite society considered
that parents had sufficiently obliged their children
by bringing them into the world, and that further
favours, such as a judicious training, were entirely
superfluous.

The household was completed by two super-
annuated secretaries, whom Helvetius kept, very
characteristically, not because he wanted them,
but because he feared no one else would want
them either. One of them, Baudot, had known
his master from a child, and spoke to him as if
he were one still. 'I have certainly not all the
faults Baudot finds in me,' observed Helvetius
tranquilly, 'but I have some of them. Who
would tell me of them if I did not keep him ? '

Sometimes visitors came to Vore, but for so
sociable an age, not very often. Though they
were always made generously welcome, they must
have known they were not necessary to that
menage. Still, they were useful, if only to prove
to these married lovers how much happier they
were alone — just as the four gay winter months
they spent in Paris doubled the delights of
peaceful Vore.

The day there began with work. Helvetius
was now firmly minded to achieve glory by means
of philosophy — fame and sport, it is said, were the

188 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

only passions lie had. He spent the whole
morning writing and thinking. In composition
he had neither the hot haste of Diderot nor
the glittering inspiration of Voltaire. He wrote
indeed painfully and laboriously — as the author
born writes when he is weary and disinclined — as
a man always writes whom nature has intended
for another occupation. Sometimes one of the
incompetent secretaries had to wait for hours with
his pen in his hand, while his master wrestled
with the refractory thought in his brain, or waited
for the inspired phrase to come down from on
high. His wife had not much sympathy with his
philosophies. The philosophers talked so much,
and as yet had done so little ! But in everything
else she was entirely at one with her husband.

It would be absurd to pretend that before the
Ee volution there were no noblemen in France
who did their duty by their country estates and
tenants, who looked after the poor on their lands,
and, so far as they could, realised and acted up
to the responsibilities of their position. There
is always more goodness in the world than there
appears to be, because goodness is of its very
nature modest and retiring. But that the con-
scientious landowner was then a rare and sur-
prising phenomenon is proved by the fact that
when Helvetius and his wife began to devote

HELVETIUS: THE CONTEADICTION 189

themselves to acts of benevolence, everyone
turned and stared at them. To-day, indeed,
Helvetius might not be counted extraordinarily
charitable. But it is not by modern standards
he can be fairly judged. Compare him with the
immense majority of the great financial magnates
of his day and country, and he stands proven a
philanthropist indeed.

When he first bought Yore, he had given a
M. de Vasconcelles, a poor gentleman who owed
the estate a large sum, a receipt for the whole,
putting it into his hands saying, ' Take this paper
to keep my people from bothering you ; ' and he
further settled a handsome gift of money on him,
to help him to educate his family. One of his
next actions was to bring a good doctor to the
place, establish him on it, and himself pay for
the medical services thus rendered the peasants.
Daily he and Minette visited the poor, accom-
panied by this doctor and a Sister of Mercy.
He also set up in the place a stocking manu-
factory — and so, perhaps, supplied an idea to
Voltaire. He encouraged and helped the farmers
to farm their land ; acted as unpaid judge in their
disputes; and in hard times let them off their
debts. There are a dozen stories of the private
individuals he helped. One day, it is a ruined
Jesuit priest, who has abused his confidence and

190 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

kindness. Helvetius finds one of the Jesuit's
friends, and gives liim fifty louis for his old
enemy. ' Do not say it comes from me — he has
injured me, and he would feel humiliated at
receiving a gift from me.' Could delicacy go
further ?

Another day, when he was driving, a woodman
leading a horse and cart was irritatingly slow in
getting out of the way of the carriage. Helvetius
lost his patience. 'All right,' said the man, 'I
am a coquin and you are an honest man, I suppose,
because I am on foot and you are in a carriage.'
' I beg your pardon,' says Helvetius, with his fine
instincts instantly awake, ' you have given me an
excellent lesson, for which I ought to pay ; ' and
he gave the man a sum which, though handsome,
was less generous than the apology.

When famine came to Vore, Helvetius' deep
purse and wise judgment were both to the fore.
Did the man accomplish less good because, though
his heart was kind, it was not warm; because,
though he relieved suffering, there was that in
his temperament which saved him from suffer-
ing with it? If the philanthropist must have
either a cool head or a hot heart, better the cool
head a thousand times. He will do much less
harm.

Many of Helvetius' charities were performed

HELVETIUS: THE CONTEADICTION 191

through his valet, whom he bade say nothing about
them, even after his death. Sometimes he concealed
from his wife, and she concealed from him, the
good deeds of which each had been guilty.

A peasant had been imprisoned for poaching
on Helvetius' grounds, and his gun confiscated.
Helvetius went to him, bought back his gun, paid
his fine, and had him set free, begging his silence
because Minette had warned him to be severe with
the man as he deserved. That warning troubled
her generous heart. She too went to the culprit,
gave him money to pay his fine and repurchase
his gun, and vowed him to secrecy. Whether the
peasant kept the secrets (as well as the price of
two fines and two guns), and husband and wife
confessed to each other, history does not relate.

There is, indeed, a reverse side to Helvetius'
character as enlightened landowner. Carlyle, in
his ' Essay on Diderot,' quotes Diderot's ' Voyage
a Bourbonne,' in which the ex-Farmer-General is
portrayed as a cruelly strict preserver, living in
the midst of peasants who broke his windows,
plundered his garden, tore up his palings, and
hated him so savagely that he dared not go out
shooting save with an armed escort of four-and-
twenty keepers. Diderot added that Helvetius
had swept away a little village of huts which the
poor people had built on the fringe of his

192 THE FRIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

preserves ; that the good philosopher was a
coward, and the unhappiest of men. But it must
be remembered that Diderot did not speak from
first-hand observation, but drew, and said he drew,
all his information from a Madame de Noce, a
neighbour of Helvetius. Now happy, unsociable
people like Helvetius and his wife are not likely
to be popular in a limited country society, which
would expect much from them, and get practically
nothing. Saint-Lambert and Marmontel both
speak of Helvetius' liberality, generosity, and
unostentatious benevolence. Morellet, who was
his closest intimate for many years, adds like
testimony, and especially mentions his mercy to
poachers. One story illustrating it has been told.
Another runs that Helvetius found a man poaching
under the very windows of his house, and at first
naturally inclined to wrath, curbed himself : ' If
you wanted game, why did you not ask me ? I
would have given it to you.'

Perhaps the truth of the whole matter lies in
that anecdote. The keen sportsman and preserver
did sometimes lose his temper and forget his
compassion : his better self soon recalled it, and
that rare disposition of humility and love for his
fellows hastened to make amends.

In 1755, the book to which he had devoted
those long, laborious mornings at Vore (by which

HELVl^TIUS: THE CONTEADICTION 193

I must certainly achieve glory, if I am to achieve
it at all!) was finished at last. It was to be called
' De I'Esprit ' — not to be translated ' Wit,' as
Croker translated it, but something much more
serious — ' On the Mind.'

It set out to prove a new theory of human
action, and a new system of morality. Virtue and
vice? There are no such things. Self-interest,
rightly understood, is the explanation of the one,
and self-interest, misunderstood, of the other.
Selfishness and the passions are the sole main-
springs of our deeds. So far from character being
destiny, as Novalis is to declare, destiny is in all
cases character. Everybody is the creature of
his environment and his education. Free Will ?
What free will to be an honest man has the child
of thieves, brought up to thieve in a slum ?
Change his condition, and you change him.
Leave him, and he will steal as certainly as fire
burns and the waves beat on the shore. As for
the vaunted superiority of the human intelligence
over the brutes, ' an accident of physical organisa-
tion ' can account for that. We are as the brutes,
only a little better, and the difference is wholly of
degree, not of kind.

Put these theories, with their showy falsehood
and their substratum of truth, on the library table
of any clever man, and get him to do his best to

o

194 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

prove them by sophistry and ingenuity, by trick,
by subterfuge, by illustration — somehow, any-
how, so that he prove them to the hilt — and the
result will be pretty well what Helvetius made it.
There was scarcely a good story, or a bad one,
he had heard in his early gay life in Paris that he
did not bring in, by hook or by crook, to point
and enliven his paradox. Madame de Graffigny
told Bettinelli that nearly all the notes were the
' sweepings ' of her salon.

' On the Mind ' is entertaining or nothing — diffi-
culties presented solely that they may be wittil}^
demolished — easy, inaccurate, trifling ; a style ' in-
sinuating and caressing . . . made for light minds,
young people and women,' says Damiron ; a book
which fashion might skip at its toilette, and then,
on the strength of remembering two or three of
its dubious anecdotes, claim a complete knowledge
of its bizarre philosophy. For it was but a
hizarrerie — a jeu d' esprit — and Helvetius knew it.
He was merely concerned to see how far his im-
possible theories could be made plausible, and
wrote them to catch the public ear, and turn their
author into the lion and darling of the season.

When the thing was ready he took it to
Tercier, the censor, who passed it, suggesting only
the omission of a few too complimentary references
to free-thinking Hume. Helvetius cut them out.

HELVlfiTIUS: THE CONTEADICTION 195

Malesherbes, during its printing, observed uneasily
that the book contained ' some very strong things '
— insolent remarks, for instance, on that dear,
crusted old despotism under which we all live,
and certainly a suggestion that any means to over-
throw tyranny are permissible. But, all the same,
in May 1768 it received its privilege. Majesty was
graciously pleased to accept a copy from the author,
our maitre d'hotel. It was already in the hands of
the philosophers. And everybody began to read.

It would not have been wonderful, if the
theories had had a little more vraisemblance, that
most people, particularly people who had devoted
their lives and their fortunes to others, who had
laboured in poverty that other men might be free
and rich, should object to see their self-denial set
down as self-interest, and to be informed that the
highest aspiration of their soul was really nothing
but a morbid condition of the body. But, con-
sidering their manifest absurdity, it is wonderful
that these assertions were taken seriously.

Madame du Deffand, indeed, might naturally
say that in making self-interest the mainspring of
conduct, Helvetius had revealed everybody's secret.
He had so certainly discovered hers. But Turgot,
whose life was to do good, had better have laughed
at an absurdity than have risen up to condemn it
as 'philosophy without logic, literature without

2

196 THE FRIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

taste, and morality without goodness/ A Con-
dorcet, whose long devotion to duty was rewarded
only with ruin and death, need not have troubled
to loathe it. Eousseau immediately sat down to
refute it : some of the most inspired pages of his
' Savoyard Vicar ' still glow with the hatred with
which it inspired him. Grimm wisely only pooh-
poohed it. Voltaire grumbled that his pupil had
promised a book on the Mind, and presented a
treatise on Matter; that he had 'put friendship
among the bad passions,' and, much worse than all,
has actually compared me — me — to two such feeble,
second-rate luminaries as Crebillon and Fontenelle !
No wonder that he found the title, ' De I'Esprit,'
equivocal, the matter unmethodical, all the new
things false and all the old ones truisms.

For a very short time, however, approved or
disapproved, taken as folly or mistaken for reason,
the book went its way gaily. It bade fair to
become what Helvetius had meant it to be — the
success of a season. But for the besotted stupidity
of the Government, it never would have been
anything else.

One unlucky day the Dauphin, who was more
virtuous than wise, came out of his room with
a copy in his hand and fury in his face. ' I am
going to show the Queen the sort of thing her
maitre d! hotel prints.

HELVISTIUS: THE CONTEADICTION 197

On August 10, 1758, the privilege for its
publication was revoked. Tercier was deprived
of his office. 'On the Mind' was furiously
attacked in the religious papers. The avocat
general, Fleury, pronounced it 'an abridgment
of the Encyclopaedia.' The Archbishop of Paris
declared it struck at the roots of Christianity. At
Court, Helvetius was all at once 'regarded as a
child of perdition, and the Queen pitied his mother
as if she had produced Anti-Christ.' Eome banned
the accursed thing. On January 31, 1759, the
Pope attacked it with his own hand in a letter.
On February 6 the Parliament of Paris condemned
it. On February 10 it was publicly burned by
the hangman, with Voltaire's ' JSfatural Law.' On
April 9 the Sorbonne censured it, and declared it
to contain ' the essence of the poisons ' of all modern
literature.

Helvetius, from being the happiest of easy-
going, benevolent philosophers, found himself, as
it were in a second, in a position of great danger,
and what CoUe in his Journal called ' cruel pain.
His friends hotly urged upon him a retractation
to soften the certain punishment awaiting him.
His mother begged it from him with tears. Only
Minette, a sterner and a braver soul, refused,
though ' a great personage ' besought her, to add
her own entreaties to that end.

198 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

Still, it had to be done. Something of a coward
this Helvetius, as CoUe suggested now, as Diderot
had suggested before ? The rich and easy life he had
led does not breed courage certainly. But, after
all, Helvetius only did what Voltaire and many a
better man declared it was essential to do in that
day. He produced a ' Letter from the Eeverend
Father . . . Jesuit,' in which he stated that he
had written in perfect innocence and simplicity,
and (this was undoubtedly true) that he had not
had the slightest idea of the effect his book would
create. He added, in the stiff phraseology of the
time, words to the effect that he was an exceedingly
religious man and very sorry indeed. The amende
was so far accepted that the Parliament simply
condemned him to give up his stewardship, and
exiled him for two years to Yore.

What the book could never have done for
itself, or for its author, persecution did for them
both. ' On the Mind ' became not the success of
a season, but one of the most famous books of
the century. The men who had hated it, and had
not particularly loved Helvetius, flocked round
him now. Voltaire forgave him all injuries, in-
tentional or unintentional. ' What a fuss about
an omelette ! ' he had exclaimed when he heard
of the burning. How abominably unjust to per-
secute a man for such an airy trifle as that!

HELVETIUS: THE CONTBADICTION 199

'^'' I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to
the death your right to say it,' was his attitude
now.^But he soon came, as a Voltaire would
come, to swearing that there was no more mate-
rialism in ' On the Mind ' than in Locke, and a
thousand more daring things in 'The Spirit of
Laws.' Turgot and Condor cet forgave the philo-
sophy, in their pity for the philosopher. D'Alem-
bert made common cause with the man with whom
he had nothing else in common. Eousseau in-
stantly stopped writing his refutation. Diderot
roundly swore ' On the Mind ' was one of the great
books of the age. Though Eome had censured it,
cardinals wrote to condole with its author on the
treatment it had received. It was translated into
almost all European languages. Presently, Eng-
land published an edition of her own. And Hel-
vetius, when that two years' exile — a punishment
surely only in name? — was over, returning to
Paris, found himself the most distinguished man in
the capital.

In their fine hotel in the Eue Sainte-Anne
(Eue Helvetius, the municipality of 1792 re-
christened it, and Eue Saint -Helvetius, the
cockers of Paris !) he and his wife received the
flower of French society. Turgot introduced to
them Morellet, who soon became a daily visitor,
rode with them in the Bois, and stayed with them

200 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIBE

in the country. To their Tuesday dinners at
two o'clock came Condorcet, d'Alembert, Diderot,
d'Holbach, Galiani, Marmontel, Saint-Lambert,
Eaynal, Gibbon, and Hume—' the States-General
of the human mind,' says Garat. Only time-
serving Buffon, in order not to offend the Court,
gave up visiting at the house. If Galiani found
the religious, or irreligious, views of the salon
too free, Madame his hostess shared his opinion,
and would often purposely disturb a too daring
conversation by drawing aside one of the coterie
to talk with her a part. Helvetius himself was
still, as he had ever been, listener rather than
talker ; or talker chiefly when he laid before his
friends, with a naivete and simplicity wholly at
variance with the sophistry and artificiality of his
writing, the difficulties he had encountered in it that
morning, or some theories which it had suggested.

Sometimes, directly dinner was over, he slipped
out to the opera, and left his wife to do the
honours alone. When they were not entertaining
themselves, they rarely went out, unless it were
on Fridays to Madame Necker's. 'Jealous ot
his wife,' said acid Grimm, accounting for this
unsociability. 'Happy with her,' is perhaps a
truer solution.

But if their own entourage was thus satisfactory,
the Court was still bitterly hostile. Though Hel-

HELVETIUS: THE CONTRADICTION 201

vetius, of course, knew very well that that hostility
had been the advertisement to which his book
owed everything, still, its injustice rankled.

Admiring England invited him to her shores ;
and on March 10, 1764, he landed there, accom-
panied by his two daughters, Elizabeth and
Genevieve, who, being only ten and twelve years
respectively, were certainly rather young for their
father to be seeking husbands for them among
' the immaculate members of our august and
incorruptible senate,' as Horace Walpole declared
that he was.

All the great people, including King George
the Third, received the persecuted philosopher
with empressement. ' Savants and politicians '
flocked to be introduced to him. Gibbon found
him ' a sensible man, an agreeable companion, and
the worthiest creature in the world.' Hume
(remembering the compliments it contained and
the many more it would have contained but for
that wretched censor) naturally thought ' On the
Mind ' the most pleasing of writings, and had even
entered into an agreement with its author to
translate it into English, if he, on his part, would
translate Hume's philosophical works into French.
(This bargain was never concluded.) Warburton,
indeed, declined to meet this French ' rogue and
atheist' at dinner. But Helvetius, as a whole,

202 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

had every reason to like Englishmen, and he came
back to France, Diderot told Mademoiselle Yolland,
as madly attached to England as d'Holbach was
the reverse. ' This poor Helvetius,' says Diderot,
to excuse him, 'saw only in England the per-
secutions his book had brought him in France.'
There may certainly be truth in that.

A year later, in 1765, he went to stay with
Frederick the Great. That astute monarch had not
at all approved of ' On the Mind.' ' If I wanted
to punish a province, I would give it to philo-
sophers to govern,' said he. But he found Hel-
v^tius, as all the world found him, a thousand
times better than his book, and observed very
justly that in writing he had much better have
consulted his heart than his head.

But that was what Helvetius could never do.

When he got back to Yore, to Minette
and the little daughters (he had not found any
spotless and disinterested members of parliament
to marry them and enjoy their fortunes of fifty
thousand pounds apiece), he settled down to
literature again and wrote, with seven years' severe
and unremitting labour, ' On Man, his Intellectual
Faculties, and his Education,' which was a sort of
defence of ' On the Mind ' and an answer to the
criticisms both friends and foes had brought
against that work. If he had been persistently

HELVETIUS: THE CONTKADICTION 203

lively on ' Mind,' he was persistently dull on
' Man.' When it was published, after his death,
only a few friends who had loved its author de-
fended it. Mademoiselle de Lespinasse voiced a
very general opinion when she declared herself
' staggered ' at its preposterous length ; and Grimm
(of course) declared that, for his part, he would
rather have ten lines of the dear little Abbe
Galiani than ten volumes such as that.

Meanwhile, it had given Helvetius the best
solace chagrins and declining life can have — a
regular occupation. He was not old, and he was
framed, says Guillois, to be a centenarian. But
at that epoch men spent their health and strength
with such fearful prodigality in their youth, that
they rarely lived beyond what is now called
middle age. Helvetius was not more than five-
and-fifty when he became conscious of failing
powers. Sport, which had been the delight of
his life, lost its zest. The bankrupt condition of
his country, her light-hearted descent to ruin, lay
heavily now on a soul framed by nature to take the
world serenely and to see the future fair. He was
occupied, it is true, to the end in those works of
benevolence and kindness which pay an almost
certain interest in happiness to him who invests in
them. Then, too, to the last, there was his wife,
who might have loved a better man than he, but

204 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

who — love, fortunately for most people, not being
given entirely to worth — spent on him the fidelity
and devotion of her life.

On December 26, 1771, Helvetius died. He
was buried in the Church of Saint-Eoch, in Paris.

Minette, a very rich widow, bought a house
in Auteuil, where, visited by Turgot, Condorcet,
Benjamin Franklin, Morellet, and the famous
young doctor, Cabanis, she lived ' to love those
her husband had loved, and to do good to those he
had benefited.' Franklin, it is said, would fain
have married her. And Turgot — who knows?
Elizabeth and Genevieve, enormously rich heir-
esses, were married on the same day, a year after
their father's death, each to a Count.

In 1772, 'On Man' was published, with the
reception which has been recorded. That early
poem, ' Happiness,' also now publicly appeared for
the first time, with a prose preface by Saint-
Lambert — the prose, said Galiani, being much
better than the verse.

To Helvetius' works, or rather to his work, for
' On the Mind ' is the only one that counts, is now
generally meted the judgment which should have
been meted to it when it appeared. Catch thistle-
down, imprison it, examine it beneath a microscope,
and a hundred learned botanists will soon be
confabulating and fighting over it. Put it in the

HBLVETIUS: THE CONTRADICTION 205

free air and sunshine — and, lo ! it is gone. ' On
the Mind' was but thistledown, and the winds
have blown it away.

But the man who wrote it deserves recollection
because, though he wrote it, he and Turgot alone
among their compeers realised in practice that the
best way to do good to mankind is to do good
to individual man, here and to-day, and that the
surest means to relieve the sorrows of the world is
to help the one poor Lazarus lying, full of sores,
at the gate.

206 THE FBIENDS OF VOLTAIBE

VIII
TURGOT: THE STATESMAN

Among Voltaire's friends Turgot and Condorcet
at least were not merely great, but also good
men. Even Condorcet, though himself of virtuous
and noble life, had not that high standard of living,
that sterner modern code of purity and upright-
ness, which were remarkably Turgot's.

But Turgot was something more even than the
best man of his party. He was the best worker.
While Voltaire clamoured and wept for humanity,
while d'Alembert thought, Grimm wrote, Diderot
talked, and Condorcet dreamed and died, Turgot
laboured. Broad and bold in aim, he was yet con-
tent to do what he could. Of him it might never
be said ' L'amour du mieux t'aura interdit du bien.'
To do one's best here and now, with the wretched
tools one has to hand, in the teeth of indolence,
obstinacy, and the spirit of routine, to compromise
where one cannot overcome, and instead of sitting
picturing some golden future, to do at once the
little one can — that was this statesman's policy.

ANNE-ROBERT-JACQUES TURGOT.
From, an Engraving by Le Beau, after the Portrait by Troy.

TUEGOT: THE STATESMAN 207

It was so far successful, that all men now allow
that if any human power could have stemmed the
avalanche of the French Eevolution, it would have
been the reforms of Turgot.

His father was the Provost of Merchants in
Paris, and has earned the gratitude of Parisians
by enlarging the Quai de I'Horloge and joining it by
a bridge to the opposite bank of the Seine, and by
erecting the fountain in the Eue de Grenelle de
St. Germain.

Anne Eobert Jacques was his third son, and a
timid, shy little creature. His mother, who, en
vraieParisienne, thought everything of appearance
and manners, worried him on the subject of his
clumsiness and stupidity, which naturally made
the child self-conscious and increased the faults
fourfold. When visitors arrived to flatter Madame
by admiring her children, Anne Eobert hid under
the sofa or the table ; and when he was removed
from his retreat, could produce no company
manners at all. No wonder the mother never even
suspected the strong intellect and the wonderful
character that so much awkwardness concealed.

Anne Eobert's birth was contemporaneous
with Voltaire's visit to England, and took place
on May 10, 1727. The child had already two
brothers. The eldest was bound, after the foolish
custom of the day, to follow his father's profession ;

208 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

the second brother must go into the army ; and
for Anne Kobert there was nothing left but the
Church.

He followed Voltaire and Helvetius at the
school of Louis-le-Grand, and when sufficiently
advanced, moved on to the College of Plessis.
As a schoolboy his pocket-money disappeared
with the usual rapidity, but not in the usual way.
This shy little student gave it to his poorer com-
panions, to buy books. From the time he was
sixteen — that is in 1743 — until 1750, he was
a divinity student. At Saint-Sulpice, whither
he went in 1748 on leaving Plessis, he took his
degree as a Theological Bachelor, and from there
entered the Sorbonne.

The Sorbonne, which was swept away by the
Eevolution, was a very ancient Theological College
and in some respects not unlike an English
university. Young Turgot found there Morellet
and Lomenie de Brienne, besides a certain Abbe
de Cice, to whom in 1749 he addressed one of the
first of his writings, a ' Letter on Paper Money.'

In 1749, Turgot was made Prior of the
Sorbonne, in which role he had to deliver two
Latin lectures, choosing for his themes, 'The
Advantages of Christianity,' and ' The Advance of
the Mind of Man.' All the time he was reading,
thinking, observing on his own account, studying

TUEGOT: THE STATESMAN 209

especially Locke, Bayle, Clarke, and Voltaire. A
priest he soon knew lie could not be. To be sure,
the fact that his friend Lomenie de Brienne is a
sceptic will not prevent him becoming a cardinal
and Archbishop of Toulouse ; he would have been
Archbishop of Paris had his Majesty not been so
painfully particular as to demand that the Primate
of the capital should at least believe in a God.
But Turgot was of other metal and was not
minded to live a lie. All his friends begged him
to keep to the lucrative career assigned him,
surely, by Providence! 'You will be a bishop,'
says Cice comfortably, 'and then you can be a
statesman at your leisure.'

The argument was very seductive ; but this
student was in every respect unlike other students,
with a character breathing a higher and finer air
than theirs. Morellet records, not without the
suspicion of a sneer, that from their coarse boyish
jokes he shrank as one shrinks from a blow.
Even Condorcet, himself so pure in life, laughed
at people wasting time in quenching the desires of
the flesh; but Turgot vindicated purity as well
as practised it, and reached a level of principle,
as of conduct, which in the eighteenth century
was unfortunately almost unique.

His father, wiser than most parents in like
circumstances, countenanced his objections to the

p

210 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

priesthood. He had already studied law, as well
as theology. In 1750 he left the Sorbonne, and
Lom^nie gave a farewell dinner in his rooms, with
Turgot and Morellet of the party, and the light-
hearted guests planned a game of tennis behind
the church of the Sorbonne for the year 1800.

The year 1800 ! Before then the Sorbonne
itself had perished with Church, monarchy, and
nobility; shallow Brienne, having done mighty
mischief, had poisoned himself in the chateau his
ill-earned wealth had been gained to restore;
Morellet was writing revolutionary pamphlets;
and Turgot was dead.

In 1752, two years after he left the Sorbonne,
Anne Eobert obtained the legal post of Deputy
Counsellor of the Procurator-General, and a year
later was made Master of Bequests.

One must picture him at this time as a tall,
broad-shouldered, rather handsome man, with that
old boyish constraint in his manner, and that
strict high-mindedness which his own generation
could not be expected to find attractive. Add to
these qualities that he was not in the least carried
away by dreams and visions, as were nearly all his
friends, that even then he saw the world as it was,
and meant to do with it what he could — that,
though in lofty aim he may have been an ideahst,
he never fell into the idealist's fault of believing

TURGOT: THE STATESMAN 211

that, because there is everything to do, he must
do everything, or nothing. Just, reasonable,
practical — what a wholesome contrast to your
visionary Eousseaus, ay, and to your impulsive
Voltaires ! He was not a brilliant person, this ; it
is said that he was slow in everything he under-
took. Nor had he given over the vigour of his
youth and the strength of his understanding to
any one party. He was studying them all.

He was about three or four and twenty when
he first began to go into the intellectual society of
Paris — when Montesquieu, d'Alembert, Galiani,
Helvetius, found the stiffness of manner more than
redeemed by the wealth of the mind. Presently
he was introduced to Madame de Graffigny, and
complimented her by writing a long review of her
'Letters from a Peruvian,' which, as giving his
own views on education, on marriage, and on the
fashionable avoidance of parenthood, retains all its
interest. It is strange to hear a pre-Eevolutionary
Frenchman urging love-marriages — ' Because we
are sometimes deceived, it is concluded we ought
never to choose' — and strange also that, out of
all the great reformers with whom his name
is associated, Turgot alone perceived the fearful
havoc which neglect of family duties makes in the
well-being of the State.

He was presented to Madame de Graffigny by her

p 2

212 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEB

niece, Mademoiselle de Ligniville. The bright and
charming Minette naturally did not find it at all
difficult to draw Anne Eobert of five-and-twenty
from the intellectual society of her aunt's salon to
a game of battledore and shuttlecock a deux.
Morellet, watching the pair, professed himself
pained and astonished that their friendship did not
end as nearly all such friendships do and should.

Most ol Turgot's biographers have sought the
reason why Mademoiselle de Ligniville became
Madame Helvetius and not Madame Turgot — and
have not found it. As for Turgot, he said
nothing. It remains idle to speculate whether he
conceived for her a passion, which his gaucherie
and shyness, perhaps, prevented her from return-
ing ; or whether he had already devoted his life
to his public duty, and thought that private
happiness would be deterrent and not spur to his
work for the race. An unhappy or an unrequited
affection is one of the finest incentives to labour
and success one can have. It may be that Turgot
had it. The only certain facts are that Minette
married Helvetius, and that Turgot remained her
life-long friend.

In 1754 he made the acquaintance of Quesnay
and of de Gournay, the political economists, who
influenced not a little his life and thought. He
soon began writing articles for the Encyclopedia,

TUEGOT: THE STATESMAN 213

though he never joined in that battle-cry ol the
Encyclopasdists, ^crasez rinfdme, and was wholly
without sympathy for the atheism of d'Holbach
and the materialism of Helvetius. Turgot, indeed,
may be said to have been, in the broadest accepta-
tion of the term, a Christian ; or rather he would
be called, and call himself, a Christian to-day.
But his Christianity was not of Eome nor yet of
Protestantism, but that in whose honest doubt
there lives more faith than in half the creeds. He
certainly gave little expression to it. It was the
religion of the wise man — which he never tells.

When he was on a geologising tour in Switzer-
land, in 1760, he saw the great Pontiff of the Church
of Antichrist at Delices. That generous old person
was warm in delight and admiration for his guest.
D'Alembert had introduced him, and d'Alem-
bert's friends must always be welcome. And then
Turgot's article on ' Existence ' in the Encyclopaedia
had made even more impression on this impres-
sionable Voltaire than on the world of letters in
general. He took this young disciple to his heart
at once. Well, then, if he is not precisely a
disciple, he is at least a most 'lovable philo-
sopher,' and ' much fitter to instruct me than I
am to instruct him ! ' It was Voltaire who was
dazzled by the young man's splendid possibilities,
not the young man who was dazzled by Voltaire's

2U THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

matchless fame and daring genius. Turgot was
never dazzled ; it was his greatness, if it was also
his misfortune, to see men and the world exactly
as they are.

In 1761 he was made Intendant of Limoges.
It was the great opportunity; he had wanted
practical work — not to think, to write, or to
dream. Voltaire wrote of him afterwards as one
' qui ne chercha le vrai que pour faire le bien.'
He wanted to Do ; and here was everything to be
done.

The picture of provincial France before the
Ee volution has been painted often, but the subject
is one of which the painter can never tire and to
which he can never do justice.

The Limoges which Turgot found was one of
the most beautiful districts of France — and one of
the most wretched. Here, on the one side, rose
the chateaux of the great absentee noblemen, who,
always at Court, left behind them middlemen to
wring from the poor innumerable dues, with which
my lord, forsooth, must pay his debts of honour
and make a fine figure at Versailles. The few
nobles who did live on their country estates ex-
pected their new young Intendant to be an agree-
able social light, as his predecessors had been,
who would keep, for the elite of the neighbour-
hood, an open house where one would naturally find

TUEGOT: THE STATESMAN 216

good wine, rich fare, and delightful, doubtful
company.

On the other hand were the clergy — often
ignorant, but generally cunning enough to play
on the deeper ignorance of their flock by threats
of the Hereafter, and to keep from them that
knowledge which is the death-blow of superstition.

Then there were the poor. Picture a peasantry
whose homes were windowless, one-roomed huts
of peat or clay; who subsisted, in times of
plenty, on roots, chestnuts, and a little black
bread; who had neither schools nor hospitals,
teachers nor doctors ; who were the constant prey
of pestilence and famine ; whose bodies were the
possession of their lords, and whose dim souls were
the perquisites of the priests. Consider that these
people were not allowed to fence such miserable
pieces of land as they might possess, lest they
should interfere with my lord's hunting; nor to
manure their wretched crops, lest they should spoil
the flavour of his game ; nor to weed them, lest
they should disturb his partridges. Consider that,
if such land could have borne any fruit, a special
permission was required to allow its owners to
build a shed to store it in. Consider that their
villages, in which they herded like beasts, were
separated from other villages by roads so vile
that they would have rendered commerce difficult.

216 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEB

if legal trammels had not made it impossible.
Consider that these people had been scourged for
generations by hundreds of unjust and senseless
laws, made by and for the benefit of their op-
pressors, and that they were now the victims of
taxes whose very name has become an indictment,
and whose description is a justification of the
French Kevolution.

On the one flank they were whipped by the
taille — the tax on the income and property of the
poor, which absorbed one-half of the net products
of their lands — and on the other by the corvee^
which compelled them to give yearly twelve or
fifteen days' unpaid labour on the roads and the
use of a horse and cart, if they had them. The
milice demanded from each parish its quota of
soldiers (the rich being exempt as usual), and
compelled the parishes to lodge passing detach-
ments of military and to lend cattle to draw the
military equipages. The gahelle, or tax on salt,
forced each poor man to buy seven pounds of salt
per annum — whether, as in one province, it was
a halfpenny a pound, or, as in another, it was
sixpence — and let the noble, the priest, and the
Government official go free. Toll-gates were so
numerous in the country that it is said fish brought
from Harfleur to Paris paid eleven times its value
on the journey. Wine was taxed ; corn was taxed.

TUEGOT: THE STATESMAN 217

But this was not all. If these taxes were
cruelly unjust, they were settled and regular.
Irregular taxes could be levied at any moment
at the caprice of the despot at Versailles, who no
more realised the condition of his peasantry than
an ordinary Briton realises the condition of a tribe
of Hottentots. One, called with an exquisite irony
the Tax of the Joyful Accession, had been raised
when Louis the Fifteenth reached the throne of
France — to topple it down the abyss. Another
was the vingtieme, or tax on the twentieth part of
a franc, which could be doubled or trebled at the
pleasure of the Government.

Apart altogether from the taxes, the peasantry
were subject to tithes exacted by the Church, itself
exempt from all taxation, to large fees for christen-
ing and marrying, for getting out of the misery of
this world and avoiding worse misery in the next.

The clergy were on the spot to exact these dues,
just as the middleman was on the spot to exact
the dues for the nobles. Some of these dues and
seigneurial rights are so shameful and disgusting
that their very terms are unrepeatable. Even that
vile age permitted many of them to lapse and
become a dead letter; but the number, and the
full measure of the iniquity of those that were
insisted on, has never been counted, and will never
be known until the Day of Judgment.

218 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

What effect would hundreds of years of such
oppression have on the character of the oppressed?
Hopeless, filthy, degraded, superstitious with the
craven superstition which made them the easy
prey of their unscrupulous clergy and left them
wholly sensual and stupid; as animals, without the
animals' instinctive joy of life and fearlessness of
the morrow ; with no ambitions for themselves or
the children who turned to curse them for having
brought them into such a world ; with no time to
dream or love, no time for the tenderness which
makes Hfe, life indeed — they toiled for a few cruel
years because they feared to die, and died because
they feared to live. Such were the people Turgot
was sent to redeem.

What wonder that many men gave up such a
task in despair ; that many even good men found
it easier to prophesy a Golden Age in luxurious
Paris than to fight hand to hand against the awful
odds of such an awful reality ? Turgot was thirty-
four when he went to Limoges, and forty-seven
when he left it. He spent there the most vigorous
years of his life ; if he did not do there his most
famous work, he did his noblest.

He began at once. It was nothing to him that
his own caste shot out the lip and scorned him.
Cold and awkward in manner, regular and austere
in habit, and as pure as a good woman, of course

TUEGOT: THE STATESMAN 219

they hated him. But it was much to him that
the clergy who ruled the people were also his foes,
that that very people themselves were so dull and
hopeless, that they too suspected his motives and
concluded that because for them every change
had always been for the worse, every change
alwaj^s would be. Slowly, gradually, he gained
the favour of the priest and the love of the flock.
He could not turn their hell into heaven : he
could not make earth at all what Condorcet, up-
lifted in noble vision, would dream it yet might
be. But he could do something.

In 1765, he procured for Limoges an edict re-
storing free trade in grain in that province. Ver-
sailles, wholly abandoned to its amusements, did
not in the least care whether edicts were granted
or whether they were revoked. Turgot did care.
He perceived that the Court was not minded to be
plagued with his reforms ; and he plagued it till
it gave him what he wanted — to go away.

Then he turned to the other taxes. The exist-
ence of a privileged class which pays nothing and
devours much by its shameful exactions, is itself a
monstrous thing. Taille is the crowning iniquity ;
but it will take a Eeign of Terror to kill it. In the
meantime Turgot, in the teeth of the besotted
ignorance and opposition of the wretched beings

220 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

he was trying to help, could and did see that it
was fairly administered.

In place of the personal service demanded by
the corvee, he substituted a money- tax ; which was
better for the taxed and better also for the roads.

With regard to the milice, he proposed wide
changes. But since the Government would not
rouse itself to act on the proposals, he took
advantage of its self-indulgent indifierence and
permitted evasions of the law ; when an unlucky
creature drew a black ticket in the conscription
in Limoges, the new Intendant permitted him to
find a substitute or to pay a fee. He also built
barracks, which removed the necessity for quarter-
ing the soldiers on the poor.

The fearful trammels which ' crippled trade and
industry and doomed labour to sterility,' he in
part removed. He made new roads ; he became
President of the first Agricultural Society in the
district ; he founded a veterinary college. In the
teeth of strong opposition he promoted the culti-
vation of the potato; and by having it served
daily at his own table proved to the ignorance of
the peasants that it was at least safe for human
food. He also introduced the growth of clover,
and entirely suppressed a worrying little tax on
cattle. He first brought to Limoges a properly
quahfied midwife, who taught her business to

TUKGOT: THE STATESMAN 221

other women. This was the beginning of the
Hospice de la Maternite. During Turgot's Inten-
dancy the china clay, of which the famous
Limoges pottery was afterwards made, was dis-
covered.

Besides these public acts, he was engaged in
hundreds of small individual charities. Among
others, he educated at his own expense a youth
whose father had been entirely ruined by taxation
and famine. The youth was Vergniaud, after-
wards the stirring orator of the Ee volution.

In his home-life Turgot remained most frugal
and laborious, treating his servants with a benevo-
lence then accounted contemptible, and working
out his quiet schemes with an infinite patience and
thoroughness. When he was offered the richer
Intendancy of Lyons, he would not take it. Here,
as he said of himself, though he was ' the com-
pulsory instrument of great evil,' he was doing a
little good. Only a little, it might be. But if every
man did the little he could — what a different
world !

In 1765, he paid a visit to Paris, and in the
Galas case, made famous by Voltaire, spoke on the
side of tolerance with a vehemence unusual to
him. Morellet, d'Alembert, and Mademoiselle de
Lespinasse were still his friends. Condorcet was
in his closest intimacy, and destined hereafter to

222 THE FEIBNDS OF VOLTAIEE

write his Life — ' one of the wisest and noblest of
lives,' says John Stuart Mill, ' delineated by one of
the noblest and wisest of men.'

In Paris, he met Adam Smith, the political
economist. As a result of their acquaintance
Turgot produced in the next year his ' Eeflections
on the Eeformation and Distribution of Wealth,'
fertile in conception, arid in style, and anticipat-
ing many of the ideas familiar to English readers
through Adam Smith's ' Wealth of Nations.'

But the insistent claims of Limoges on his time
and pity narrowed his hours for study, even for
the study that would serve it well. In 1767 he
cleared the province of wolves, by a system ana-
logous to that by which Edgar rid Wales of the
same pest.

Then, in 1770, Limoges and its Intendant began
their fight with want. When Turgot came to the
province, the wretched place was a million francs
in arrears for its taxes. Some he had certainly
lessened. The work he had started was just
beginning to bear its first little harvest of good,
when there came the withering blast of the two
years' famine. Its horrors were unthinkable.
Turgot wrote to Terrai, the Controller-General,
that it was impossible to extort the taxes and the
arrears without ruin — ay, and with ruin — to the
taxed. The people could not only not pay what

TUEGOT: THE STATESMAN 223

was demanded of them, but they had nothing
to sell for the barren necessities of their own
existence. God knows they had learnt by long
and bitter practice to subsist on little enough !
But now they must surely sit down and die.

Strong and calm, Turgot rose up again.
From the Parliament at Bordeaux he obtained
permission to levy a tax on the rich in aid of the
sufferers. He himself opened workshops in which
he gave work, and paid for it, not in coin, which
would certainly be spent at the nearest cabaret,
but in leather tickets which could be exchanged
for food at the cheap provision shops, also of his
own institution.

Far beyond his age in every practical scheme
for the benefit of mankind, he was beyond our
own age in that he clearly perceived that the free
soup-kitchen, and all the sentimental philanthropy
which gives money in lieu of work, instead of
paying money for work, must be demoralising,
and in the long run create more misery than it
relieves. ' Such distributions,' said he, ' have the
effect of accustoming the people to mendicity.'
Even through a famine he sent to prison every
beggar he could lay hands on. Then, again far
beyond his age, he induced the ladies of the
district to teach the poor girls needlework ; and
so to give them ' the best and most useful kinds

224 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

of alms — the means to earn.* The fight was
long and hard. But it had its reward. The
people came to love him who had helped them
to help themselves ; who had given them, not the
bitter bread and scornful dole of charity, but the
power to earn a livelihood and their first taste
of self-respect.

On May 10, 1774, Louis the Sixteenth suc-
ceeded to the throne of sixty-six kings ; and on
July 20, Turgot was made Minister of Marine
and thus called to wider and fuller work. The
Limogian peasants clung about his knees with
tears, and the Limogian nobles rejoiced openly at
his departure. The one leave-taking was as great
a compliment as the other.

The merits of this ' virtuous philosophic Tur-
got, with a whole reformed France in his head,'
had not been in the least the reason of his pro-
motion. But schoolfellow Cice had whispered
pleasant things of him to Madame Maurepas, the
wife of the Minister ; and Madame had settled
the matter with her husband, who was a lively
shrewd old man of seventy-four, not inconve-
nienced by any idea of duty, and with a very
strong sense of humour.

Turgot was Minister of Marine for just five
weeks ; but in that time he had eighteen months'
arrears of wages paid to a gang of workmen at

TUEGOT: THE STATESMAN 225

Brest, and made many plans for the improvement
of the colonies, which more than twenty years
ago, at the Sorbonne, he had significantly com-
pared to * fruits which cling to the parent tree,
only until they are ripe.' On August 24, 1774,
he was made Controller-General of Finances in
the place of Terrai.

It sounded a fine position, but was it ? Limoges
represented all France in little. A ruined Treasury,
a starving people, in high places corruption and
exaction, and in low places misery such as has
rarely been seen since the world began.

Terrai, profligate and dissolute — ' What does
he want with a muff?' said witty Mademoiselle
Arnould when he had appeared with one in
winter ; ' his hands are always in our pockets ' —
had left to his successor, debt, bankruptcy, chaos.
The King was not quite twenty, weak with the
amiable weakness which is often more disastrous
in a ruler than vice. The Queen was nineteen,
careless and gay, loving pleasure and her own
way, and meaning to have both in spite of all the
controllers in the world. Maurepas, being un-
disturbed by principles, would readily abandon
his protege if he perceived for himself the least
danger in that patronage. Voltaire, indeed, wrote
that he saw in Turgot's appointment a new heaven
and a new earth, and the enlightened among the

Q

226 THE FKIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

people dreamt that the Millennium had come, but
Voltaire was but a voice crying in the wilderness,
and in the councils of State the people had neither
lot nor part.

Once again Turgot, realising to the full the
difficulties, the impossibilities even, of his position,
resolved to do what he could. Within a few
hours of his appointment he wrote a long letter
to the King, urging the absolute necessity of
economy in every department, denouncing bribes,
privileges, exemptions, and pleading — daring to
plead — equality in the imposition of taxes. No
bankruptcy, no increase of taxation, no loans —
this was to be the motto of his Controller ship.
' I feel all the perils to which I expose myself,' he
wrote. He was not even religious in the sense —
— what 'a sense! — that officials were expected to
be religious. 'You have given me a Controller
who never goes to Mass,' grumbled Louis to
Maurepas. ' Sire,' answered the Minister, very
happily, ' Terrai always went.'

The new ControUership was still a nine days'
wonder when Turgot restored throughout France
what he had restored in Limoges — free trade in
grain. In 1770 he had written on the subject
some famous ' Letters ' in answer to Terrai's revo-
cation of the edict and the witty ' Dialogues ' of
GaHani which supported that revocation. Then,

TUEGOT: THE STATESMAN 227

bolder still, he suppressed an abominable piece
of official jobbery, the Pot de Vin, or bribe of
100,000 crowns which the Farmers-General had
always presented to the Controller when he signed
a new edict. If the Farmers turned away sulkily,
angry with a generosity they were by no means
prepared to imitate, from the country came a long
burst of passionate applause.

' It is only M. Turgot and I who love the
people,' said the King. Well, this poor Louis did
love them, but his was not the love that could
stand firm by the man sent to save them. ' Every-
thing for the people, nothing by them,' was
Turgot's motto, and, perhaps, his mistake. The
King was to be the lever to raise his kingdom ;
and the weak tool broke in the Minister's hand.

The first disaster of Turgot's ControUership
was the disaster that spoiled his Intendancy. In
1774-6 scarcity of bread made many distrust
his edict restoring to them free trade in grain.
With his firm hand over Louis's shaking one he
suppressed the bread riots of that winter, as it
was never given to a Bourbon to suppress any-
thing. But he would not in justice suppress,
though he might have suppressed, Necker's adverse
pamphlet on the question, called ' The Legisla-
tion and Commerce of Grain ; ' though half the
Encyclopaedists, and many of Turgot's personal

q2

228 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

friends, were led thereby to adopt the opinions of
the solid Genevan banker.

In the January of 1775, Turgot presented his
Budget. The deficit left by Terrai was enormous.
Let us pay then, said Turgot's sound common-
sense, the legitimate contracts of Government,
not by your dear old remedy, taxation, for the
ruined country can yield no more, but by limit-
in^^ the expenses of that Government and of the
Court. Ofiicials and courtiers alike took as a
judgment from Heaven the fact, that very shortly
after this monstrous proposal, the audacious pro-
poser was sharply attacked by the gout.

Turgot's ControUership lasted in all twenty
months, and for seven of them he was very ill.
When he was blamed once for overworking himself
and trying to force everybody's hand, ' Why, do
you not know,' he answered simply, ' in my family
we die of gout at fifty ? ' His present illness kept
him in his room many weeks, but did not prevent
him from dictating an enormous correspondence,
and trying urgently to persuade his master to
begin his economical reforms by having his coming
coronation ceremonies performed cheaply at Paris,
instead of expensively at Eheims ; and to make
good his professions of tolerance by omitting from
the service the oath binding him to extirpate
heretics. Of course Louis was too weak for these

TUEGOT: THE STATESMAN 229

drastic measures; he characteristically contented
himself by mumbling the oath, and the senseless
expenses of the coronation were as large as ever.

But Turgot, undaunted, went on working. In
January 1776 he presented to the King what have
been justly called the Six Fatal Edicts — the first
for the suppression of corvee, four for the suppres-
sion of the offices interfering with the provision-
ing of Paris, and the sixth for the suppression of
jurandes or the government of privileged corpora-
tions. The first and sixth were the real cause of
battle, and embodied one of the great aims of
Turgot's administration — to make the nobility and
clergy contribute to the taxes.

A shrill outcry of indignation rang through
Versailles. Make us pay ! Us I The Court had
always scorned Turgot with his shy, quiet manner,
his gentle aloofness, and the reflection cast, in the
most odious taste, by the purity of his life on its
own manner of living. But now it hated him.
Tax us ! Curtail our extravagances ! Eeduce
our expenditure! What next? He has already
abolished a number of our very best sinecures and
lessened the salaries attached to several enticing
little offices where we were enormously paid for
doing nothing gracefully ! He has given posts to
persons fitted for them instead of to our noble and
incompetent relations ! If one of v>s (even when

280 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

one of us is the Due d'Orleans himself) wants to
do something— well— illegal, he will not allow it !
As though the makers of law could not be its
breakers if they chose ! And Versailles rustled
indignantly in its unpaid-for silks, whispered, mur-
mured, connived at the fall of this quiet, strong
person who had not a thought in common with
them — nor a thought of himself.

But he had a more dangerous enemy than
the Court — the Queen. Quick-witted, wilful, im-
petuous, with a husband whose slow, hesitating
intellect she must needs despise, clever enough to
love to meddle with great things, but not wise
enough to meddle well — ^Marie Antoinette took her
first deep step down the stairway of ruin when
she chose to be Turgot's enemy instead of Turgot's
friend. Could he have saved her too, if she would
have let him, as, but for her, men thought he might
have saved France ? God knows. Marie Antoinette
wanted to be amused, and her particular amuse-
ment, gambling, was very expensive; she was
infinitely good-natured and impetuously in love at
the moment with Madame de Lamballe, and wanted
for her the revival of the old post of Superintendent
of the Household, with its enormous emoluments.
And at her side stood Turgot, saying, ' No.' Mau-
repas had long since deserted him. It was much
easier, and safer for one's own interest, to give the

TUBGOT: THE STATESMAN 231

Queen what she wanted and have done with it.
As for Louis, he was, as usual, weak with the
weakness that brought him to the guillotine and
ended the French monarchy.

Turgot so far controlled him that the six
Edicts were registered by the unwilling Parliament
of Paris. Then Monsieur, afterwards Louis the
Eighteenth, expressed in a pamphlet of very feeble
wit the feelings of the upper classes against this
terrible reformer. That paltry skit had already
turned the King against his Minister, when
Maurepas showed him a sharp financial criticism
on Turgot's calculations as Controller-General,
and some forged letters purporting to come from
Turgot and containing expressions offensive to the
Eoyal Family. Not man enough to take them
to Turgot and demand explanation, the wretched
King went on distrusting him and giving him
feeble hints to resign.

But until there was a better man to occupy
his place, Turgot would take no hints. For the
sake of France he would push those Edicts
through, and gain his principles before he lost his
power.

Then another friend failed him. Malesherbes,
the brave old hero, who was hereafter to defend
and to die for his King, but who, as Condorcet
said, found on every subject 'many fors and

232 THE FRIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

againsts but never one to make him decide/
resigned his post in Turgot's government. ' You
are fortunate,' says hapless Louis gloomily, ' to be
able to resign. I wish I could.' The storm was
coming up fast. But the first man on whom it
was to fall remained calm and staunch.

On April 30, 1776, Turgot wrote to his King
a note begging him not to appoint Amelot
as Malesherbes' successor, and containing these
ominous words : ' Do not forget, Sire, that it was
weakness that brought the head of Charles the First
to the block.' Louis made no answer. Finally,
the match was put to the tinder of the Queen's
wrath by Turgot's dismissal from oflBce of her
worthless protege, de Guines ; and the Minister,
it was whispered, had also declined to pay a debt
she had incurred for jewellery, as against the new
rules he had himself made. Eules for a Queen !
This must certainly be the end of Queens or of
Ministers ! In this case, it was the end of both ;
only Turgot's fall came first.

As he was sitting writing, on May 12, 1776,
Bertin arrived to announce to him that he was no
longer Controller-General. He had been drawing
up an edict; laying down his pen he observed
quietly, 'My successor will finish it.' His suc-
cessor, it has been well said, was the National
Assembly.

TUEGOT: THE STATESMAN 233

Two days later, Marie Antoinette wrote
exultantly to her mother of his dismissal. What
did she care for the just reproaches of the King
and of the whole nation, which that old kill-
joy, Mercy Argenteau, declared that this deed
would bring on her head ? She would have liked
her enemy turned out of office and sent to the
Bastille the very day that de Guines was made a
Duke. Poor Queen ! Her little triumph was so
short, and her bitter punishment so long !

On May 18, Turgot took farewell of his master
in language nobly dignified and touching. 'My
one desire,' he said, 'is that you may find I
have judged wrongly, that I have warned you of
imaginary dangers.'

Clugny was appointed Controller-General ;
corvee and jurandes were re-established ; the edict
establishing free trade in grain was revoked. The
Court rejoiced aloud; the Paris Parliament was
delighted. Old Voltaire at Ferney, indeed, wept
and said that this was death before death, that a
thunderbolt had fallen on his head and his heart ;
and the wise knew that nothing could save France
now.

Turgot retired quietly into private life. That
he was disappointed, not for himself, but for his
country, is very true. True, too, he was angered
at the backstairs policy which had dismissed

234 THE FRIENDS OP VOLTAIRE

him. But far beyond this, there was so much he
could have done, which now he could never do !
Faithful to his life-long principle of gathering up
the fragments that remain, he read and studied
much, corresponded with Hume and Adam Smith,
often met and talked with Franklin, went to see
Voltaire when he came to Paris in 1778, made
experiments in chemistry and physics, and was
active in private benevolence.

Was the brief evening of his life solitary ?
The one human affection which, in its perfection,
makes loneliness impossible, was not his ; or at
best was his only as a dream or a memory. But
in the great family of earth's toiling children he
must have known there were many to love and
bless him, many he had saved from wrong or from
sorrow, some whom he had made from beasts
into men. Another blessing was his— he did
not long survive his active labours. He died
March 21, 1781, aged fifty-four.

A failure, this life? It may be so; but a
failure beside which many a success is paltry.

Turgot could not save France from her
Eevolution, but he gave her, and all countries,
practical, working theories on government, on the
liberty of the press, on the best means of helping
the poor, on the use of riches, on civil, political,
and rehgious liberty, which are still invaluable.

TURGOT: THE STATESMAN 235

He has been justly said to have founded
modern political economy ; to have bequeathed to
future generations *the idea of the freedom of
industry ; ' and to have made ready the way for
the reforms which are the glory of our own day.

Among Voltaire's fellow-workers there are far
more dazzling personalities. But from their fiery
words, exalted visions, and too glorious hopes one
turns with a certain sense of relief to this quiet,
strong, practical man, and understands why the
people, whose instinct in judging the character of
their rulers seldom betrays them in the long run,
specially acclaimed Turgot as a friend.

THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

IX

BEAUMARCHAIS: THE PLAYWRIGHT

Some men do great things incidentally and un-
intentionally. Pierre Augustin Caron de Beau-
marchais bothered his clever head scarcely at all
with schemes for the well-being of his country —
was Httle concerned with humanity and very
much with one man — ^himself. Yet by a special
irony of destiny the author of 'The Marriage
of Figaro' played one of the chief parts in the
prelude to the drama of the Kevolution.

Born in Paris on January 24, 1732, the son of
a watchmaker with a large family, Pierre Augustin
Caron early learnt his father's trade, picked up
a little Latin at a technical school at Alfort and
the rest of his education from experience and from
the world.

A lively, impudent, good-looking boy, young
Caron was from the first clever with that smart
cleverness which is as distinct from genius or from
wisdom, as kindness is distinct from sympathy

PIERRE-AUGUSTIN-CARON DE BEAUMARCHAIS.
From an Engraving, after Michon, in the Bibliotheaue Nationals, Paris.

BEAUMAECHAIS : THE PLAYWRIGHT 237

He was as sharp over his watchmaking as over
everything he undertook in Hfe. He had his first
lawsuit — the first of so many ! — over a discovery
he made in his trade, and won it. But he was
young, gay, musical, and Parisian. His trade was
only a part of his life. There were debts and
escapades. Then the watches took to disappearing
mysteriously out of old Caron's shop ; and finally
old Caron turned his scapegrace out of doors, till
the mother pleaded, not in vain, for the prodigal's
return.

Then the prodigal made the loveliest and
smallest of watches for Madame de Pompadour's
ring. The King was pleased to desire one also,
and the King's daughters, Mesdames, followed
their father's example ; while the courtiers could
not, of course, be out of the fashion. Pierre
Caron, tall, handsome, audacious, was presented
at Versailles, and made watchmaker to his Majesty.
In 1755, another piece of luck befell him. (This
Caron was one of the luckiest of human beings all
through his life.)

A pretty young married woman, who had
noticed him admiringly at Versailles, came to his
shop to have her watch mended. Caron took it
back to her house in person. A few months later
the charming person's elderly husband sold to
Caron his post at Court, and on November 9, 1755,

^m^'

238 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

a patent was accorded to the watchmaker's son
declaring him ' one of the Clerk Controllers of the
Pantry of our Household.' An agreeable little
post, this of Pharaoh's butler. Nothing to do,
only be sure you do it handsomely ! Caron,
looking exceedingly eiFective and magnificent,
preceded the King's roast with a sword clanking
at his side. At the end of a few months his
predecessor in this arduous occupation died, and
young Caron married the charming widow, Madame
Francquet, who was certainly older than himself,
but not the less agreeable to a very young man
for that.

His marriage could not, at least, have been
one of interest ; or he was so far disinterested that
he neglected to complete the marriage settlements,
and when Madame Caron died, in ten months'
time, Caron found himself penniless. She had, it
is said, a very small property, but it was apparently
so small as to be invisible, for no one has ever
discovered its whereabouts. But it is memorable
as having suggested to Caron the name by which
he now called himself, and has been ever since
known — Beaumar ch ais .

In a very short time the young widower (he
was only twenty-five) reappeared at Versailles,
not as a watchmaker or butler, but as a musician.

All the social talents had Caron — tact, impu-

BEAUMAKCHAIS : THE PLAYWEIGHT 239

dence, a witty tongue, a delightful voice, added to
a real talent for the harp, which was the fashion-
able instrument of the moment. Mesdames killed
a great deal of the too ample royal leisure with
music ; Madame Adelaide played every instrument
down to the horn and the comb. This delightful
young parvenu is the very man to teach us the
harp ! He not only did that, but he organised
concerts, of which he was himself the bright,
particular star.

On one occasion the King was so impatient
for him to begin to play, that he pushed towards
him his own armchair ; while on another, Mes-
dames declined the present of a fan on which
the painter had portrayed their concerts — with-
out the figure of Beaumarchais. Of course the
courtiers were jealous. The beautiful insolence
of his manners, the perfectly good-natured conceit
(surely one of the most exasperating of the minor
vices) naturally made him enemies. One scornful
young noble handed this new favourite, this royal
instructor, his watch to look at.

' Sir,' says Beaumarchais, ' since I have given
up my trade I have become very awkward in such
matters.'

' Do not refuse me, I beg.'

Beaumarchais takes the watch, pretends to
examine it, and drops it. ' Sir,' says he, with a

240 THE FRIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

bow to the owner, ' I warned you of my clumsi-
ness,' and, turning on his heel, leaves the watch
in fragments on the floor.

The new courtier was at least a match for the
old ones. 'I was born to be a courtier,' says
Figaro. ' To accept, to take, and to ask ; there
is the secret in three words.' Figaro's father had
the secret already. Soon he made friends with
Paris-Duverney, financier and Court banker,
' asked ' of him the art of making money, and
'received' so much of it that in 1761 he could
buy himself a brevet of nobility. He would have
bought also the post of Master of Woods and
Forests, but that the other Masters objected so
lustily to receiving such a bourgeois into their
order, that even the patronage of Mesdames, and
his own wit displayed in an amusing pamphlet,
could not gain the bourgeois his point. So he
bought the post of Lieutenant-General of the
King's Preserves instead, and in that capacity sat
solemnly in a long robe once a week in judgment
on the poachers of the neighbourhood of Paris.

In 1764, he made a journey into Spain, where
one of his sisters, who had married a Spaniard,
was living, and another had just been jilted with
a peculiar insolence and brutahty by a man called
Clavijo. Beaumarchais brought Clavijo to book ;
the day of the wedding was fixed, when the shifty

BEAUMAECHAIS : THE PLAYWRIGHT 241

suitor absconded a second time. Beaumarchais
made the episode famous in his account of the
affair, which appeared in his Fourth Memoir
against Goezman in February 1774, and which
naturally does not tend to the discredit of M. Pierre
Augustin Caron.

Besides protecting his sister and exposing her
betrayer, this energetic person was carrying out
a secret mission from Duverney and recovering
bad debts of old Caron's. Then, too, he was
enormously enjoying Spanish society, and writing
love-letters to a pretty Creole, Pauline, whom he
had left in Paris and whom he may magnificently
condescend to marry if her estates in St. Domingo
really turn out to be worth consideration. He
was further corresponding with Voltaire, and,
richest and most fruitful of all his Spanish trans-
actions, studying the Spanish stage.

He came home in 1765. After his return, he
appeared, in 1767, as a playwright, making his
debut in one of those heavy and tearful dramas in
the unfortunate style of Diderot's ' Natural Son.'
No one reads or acts ' Eugenie ' now ; but when
the adaptable Caron had shortened and altered it,
it mildly pleased the playgoing Parisians for a few
evenings.

In 1768, Beaumarchais married another widow,
Madame Leveque, having abandoned Pauline, or

R

242 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

having been abandoned by her on the score of his
mercenariness. Madame Leveque was rich and
young, and when she suddenly died three years
later there were not wanting envious enemies to
accuse this aspiring Caron of having poisoned
both his wives. The fact that their deaths left
him the poorer might have exonerated him, if his
own character did not ; but, as Voltaire said —
Voltaire, who was watching his rise in the world
with a keen interest, and who rarely made a
mistake in judging human nature — ' A quick,
impetuous, passionate man like Beaumarchais
gives a wife a blow, or even two wives two blows,
but he does not poison them.'

It may be noted, moreover, that all the women
who touched his life adored this Caron. He was
so handsome and good-natured and successful ! A
little selfish certainly ; but some women seem to
love that quality in a man — it gives them so great
a scope for denying themselves. And then he
was always so brave and gay !

His success now deserted him for a little while.
He offended the King by suggesting a mot with
a meaning — Figaro, it seems, was getting apt in
them already — which a duke gave forth at one of
the little suppers of Madame Dubarry and which
displeased his Majesty, who, to be sure, had reason
to dread hidden meanings.

BEAUMARCHAIS : THE PLAYWRIGHT 243

Then came the afiair Goezman.

In 1770 Duverney died, and Beaumarchais
immediately quarrelled with his heir, the Comte
de la Blache, and plunged into a lawsuit over a
sum of fifteen thousand francs. Beaumarchais won
the first move in the game. But unluckily he had
more than one iron in the fire just then. He fell
out fiercely with the Due de Chaulnes over a Made-
moiselle Mesnard, with the result that the Duke
was clapped into a fortress, and Beaumarchais into
the prison of For-l'Eveque. La Blache seized his
opportunity, brought his lawsuit before the Parlia-
ment of Paris, represented dumb and imprisoned
Beaumarchais as the greatest scoundrel unhanged,
won his cause, seized Beaumarchais' furniture, and
entirely ruined him.

Beaumarchais seldom lost his coolness and
courage, and he did not lose them now. While
in For-l'Eveque he had been let out on leave three
or four times. He had taken these chances to
try to win over to his side Goezman, who was
Judge-Eeporter in the lawsuit with la Blache, and
a most unfavourable judge to Beaumarchais. By
the simple and time-honoured expedient of hand-
some bribes to the wife, Beaumarchais attempted
to gain the husband's good will. Madame Goez-
man perfectly understands that, should Beau-
marchais lose his cause, she is to return his gifts

» 2

.2U THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

of a watch set in diamonds, and of money. The
cause is lost. She returns the watch and money,
save only a certain fifteen louis, to which, for
some absurd raisonnement defemme^ she considers
herself entitled, and with which she will by no
means part. Then Councillor Goezman comes
forward and accuses M. de Beaumarchais of seek-
ing to corrupt his integrity.

This ridiculous situation Beaumarchais seized
as a golden opportunity to restore his credit before
the world, to dazzle it with his wit, to entice it
with his audacity, and to make it own him the
man of matchless cleverness he was. He appealed
to public opinion, nominally to judge between
himself and Goezman, in reality to judge between
him, Goezman, la Blache, the Paris Parliament,
and all his enemies and rivals whomsoever, in
four famous Memoirs, which divided Paris into
two hostile camps and fixed on him the delighted
attention of Europe.

Except by name, and for a brilliant quotation
here and there, few people know the Goezman
Memoirs now. But in fire, wit, and irony, they are
little, if at all, inferior to the comedies by which
Beaumarchais lives. In both are the same gay
surprises of situation, banter and mockery, parry
and thrust— every page as light and elusive as
thistledown borne on a summer breeze. Their

BBAUMAECHAIS : THE PLAYWEIGHT 245

cleverness gained him the admiration not only of a
senile King, but of Voltaire as well. Old Ferney
declared he had never been so much amused in
his life. ' What a man ! ' he wrote to d'Alembert.
' He has all the qualities ; ' and again, ' Don't tell
me he has poisoned his wife, he is much too lively
and amusing for that.'

Madame Dubarry had charades acted in her
apartment, in which an interview between Beau-
marchais and Madame Goezman was represented
on the stage. The Memoirs were read aloud in
the cafes. Of the Fourth, six thousand copies were
sold in a single day. Horace Walpole delighted
in them. Madame du DeiFand gossiped of them.
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre prophesied for Beaumar-
chais the reputation of Moliere.

What did it avail then, on February 26, 1774,
when the case had lasted some three years, to
give judgment against him, sentence him to civic
degradation, prohibit him from the occupation of
any public function, and condemn the Memoirs to
be burnt as scandalous, libellous, defamatory?
He was the victor not the less. ' Le monde a beau
parler, il faut obeir,' says Voltaire. The day after
the sentence had been pronounced, the Prince de
Conti and the Due de Chartres feted the criminal,
and a delightful woman fell in love with him.
Marie Antoinette named her latest coiffure after a

246 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

joke in the Memoirs. He was so wildly applauded
when he appeared in public that Sartine, the
Lieutenant of Police, advised him to appear no
more. ' It is not enough to be condemned,' says
Sartine, ' one should be a little modest still.' The
Maupeou Parliament in attempting to destroy this
wit had ruined itself. Its ban was worse than
useless. Beaumarchais was the fashion.

The King, to be sure, had to enjoin silence
on this 'terrible advocate,' but he promised him
a revision of his suit; and then employed him,
in March, 1774, as his secret agent in England to
run to earth a person who had threatened to publish
a scandalous pamphlet on Madame Dubarry.
Beaumarchais succeeded in his mission. He
always succeeded. But when he returned to
France, Louis the Fifteenth was dying, so for all
his pains his reward was, as he said, ' swollen legs
and an empty purse.'

Soon, however, news came of a libel against
Marie Antoinette which was being prepared in
London. Off starts Beaumarchais again, pursues
the libeller (a shifty Jew) to Nuremberg, goes on
to Vienna to procure from Maria Theresa an extra-
dition treaty against him, is himself thrown into
prison for a month, and then liberated with pro-
fusest apologies and the offer of a thousand ducats.
All his adventures were delightfully romantic and

BEAUMAECHAIS : THE PLAYWEIGHT 247

picturesque ; and with his eye for scenic effect, he
took care they should lose nothing in the telling.

A year later, in 1775, he came to England on
another and far more important secret mission con-
nected with the rebellion of the American colonies.
It was the one enterprise of his life, it is said, into
which he put more heart than head. He attended
parliamentary debates, and was constantly at the
house of Wilkes. ' All sensible people in England,'
he wrote to Louis the Sixteenth in September
1775, 'are convinced that the English colonies
are lost.' He advised that, while France siiould
not openly embroil herself with England, she
should send secret aid to the insurgents. For this
purpose, financed by his country, he equipped
for war three ships — his ' navy ' he called it —
and when he returned to Paris he traded in the
American interest under the name of Eoderigue,
Hortalez & Co.

England was naturally angry when she found
out how she had been tricked, and America, so far
as money acknowledgments were concerned, was
not a little ungrateful. But the clever instrument,
Beaumarchais, came out of the affair with his
usual flourish and distinction, and would have
deserved a paragraph in history, even had he not
earned a page in literature.

On February 23, 1775, there was produced at

248 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

the old Comedie Fran^aise in the Eue des Fosses,.
Saint-Germain des Pres, opposite the famous Cafe
Procope, a play called ' The Barber of Seville.'

Accepted by the Comedie rran9aise in 1772, its
first performance, fixed for Shrove Tuesday 1773,
lad been stopped by the authorities because just
t that moment its author was unluckily serving
term of imprisonment for fighting the Due de
iiaulnes. Before the next date fixed for its debut,
had been condemned by the Maupeou Parlia-
*■ for the afiair with la Blache. The third
pt was no luckier. The irrepressible creature
ju§^t published the Fourth Goezman Memoir !
_ Vtd now, when the performance really did
c©Tf:K8iofF, it was a failure. La Harpe declared
i^fnU IL inordinate length bored people, its bad
j ^, > irritated them, and its false morality shocked
them. The parterre was loudly and vulgarly dis-
gusted, and the boxes yawned behind their fans.
By Beaumarchais ? He was but mediocre before,
we remember, in ' Eugenie.' Watchmaker, courtier,
advocate, secret agent, this — but clearly no play-
wright !

In twenty-four hours Caron had laid violent
hands on his 'Barber,' shortened him, enlivened
him, cut out his distasteful jokes and his dubious
moralities, and 'under the pressure of a discon-
tented and disappointed public ' turned him into

BEAUMAECHAIS : THE PLAYWRIGHT 249

a masterpiece. At its second performance the
play was applauded to the skies. It ran through
the whole winter season. It delighted its author
to print it with its title-page running: 'The
Barber of Seville, Comedy in Four Acts, repre-
sented and failed at the Comedie rran9aise.' It'l
drew on him one of his dear lawsuits, and enabled^
him to place the rights of dramatists over their '^•.
works on a new and firm basis, and to found thiO
first Society of Dramatic Authors. Far above dW*
it led the way to ' Figaro.' Jne -^

The subject of ' The Barber of Seville ' is^'
time-honoured one of the amorous old guard} ^^i
who falls in love with his ward; only BeUti-
marchais' guardian is a wit, not a fool. It *
defect, indeed, of both his great plays that
characters are wits. He fell into Sheridan's fa
and made his personce the mouthpieces of his own
cleverness. He wholly lacked the far higher and
finer genius, the exquisite fidelity to life and
character, which made Shakespeare give to each
of his creatures the special kind of cleverness, and
no other, proper to its nature.

Not the less, Beaumarchais writes with a light-
ness and efiervescence which are without counter-
part in dramatic literature. ' The Barber of Seville '
was taken, it is said, from an opera of Sedaine's,
and was itself originally designed to be a comic

250 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

opera. Nothing but a quarrel with the composer of
the score prevented it from first appearing in that
form in which it is to-day most familiar to the
world.

Yet it hardly needs an accompaniment of
lively music. The airs and the singing are there
already — in the gay bizarrerie of situation, the
laughing swing of repartee, and the brilliant
recitative of the longer speeches. The characters,
called by Spanish names and dressed in Spanish
clothes, are thoroughly and essentially French.
Its exquisite delicacy of touch and its rippling
mocking gaiety declare it, in fact, not only the
work of a Frenchman, but one of the most Gallic
pieces that have ever held the stage. It inaugu-
rated a new order of comedy, and introduced into
it a new character : the Barber, who was also wit,
hero, and moralist — the character of Figaro.

Beaumarchais was not at all the man to sit
down and tranquilly enjoy his first dramatic
triumph. He must not only follow it up by
writing another, but he must with enormous
difficulty, at the risk of much money, and three
years' hard work, become the editor of the first
complete edition of Voltaire's works ever given
to the public.

Then, too, he must prepare the reorganisa-
tion of the ferme generate with the Minister,

BEAUMAECHAIS : THE PLAYWEIGHT 251

Vergennes. Actresses consulted him when they
were out of an engagement, and dramatic authors
when their liberties were endangered. The author
of the Goezman Memoirs can surely help a poor
simpleton engulfed in a lawsuit, and the friend
of Duverney, the rich man who began the world
in a tradesman's shop, may well assist a ruined
speculator ! Inventors, impatient to air their dis-
coveries, carried them to him who had brought
his first legal action over a discovery of his
own. Girls deceived by their lovers begged the
assistance of the man who had held up Clavijo to
infamy.

One of the most fortunate characteristics
Beaumarchais possessed was his power of suddenly
changing his occupation, and one of his most
extraordinary characteristics was his love of doing
so. ' Shutting the drawer of an affair,' he himself
called this faculty. He shut the drawer with a
bang, and perfectly good-natured, self-conceited,
and successful, turned from a secret agency in
London to interfere with the marriage of the
Prince of Nassau, and from the marriage to assist
the Lieutenant of the Police in censuring the
works of his brother-playwrights, and from that
censorship to put into the mouth of Figaro such
sentiments as, ' Printed follies are without im-
portance except in those places where their

252 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

circulation is forbidden . . . without the liberty
to blame no praise can be flattering.'

By 1778, 'The Marriage of Figaro' was
finished; and in 1781 it was received by the
Comedie Fran^aise. But it contained that which
no censor — not even dull Louis — could pass. In
1782, he read it, and flung it from him. 'This
is detestable, this shall never be played ! '

But that prohibition was not enough for Beau-
marchais. Forbidden fruit is ever the most tantalis-
ing and delicious. Daintily tied with pink ribbons
he sent a copy of the play to this salon ; and
an-./ther to that. He announced a reading of it —
and, coquettishly and without offering any reason,
abandoned the reading at the last moment. In a
little while he had raised aU Paris on the tip-toe of
excitement. Not to have scanned at least a scene
or two of ' The Marriage of Figaro ' was to confess
oneself out of the fashion. Then the author read
the whole of it to the Grand Duke of Eussia, and
recited selections of it to the Comtesse de Lam-
balle and to Marshal Kichelieu, 'before bishops
and archbishops.'

After all, Louis was very weak, and public
opinion very strong. The First Gentleman of the
Chamber permitted the thing to be rehearsed, more
or less publicly, in the theatre of the Hotel des
Menus Plaisirs. AU the world and his wife

BEAUMAECHAIS : THE PLAYWEIGHT 253

crowded thither. The Comte d'Artois was actually
on his way when, with an awakening of his feeble
obstinacy, the King sent a mandate forbidding the
performance. Even Madame de Campan, kindly
old sycophant of the Court, confessed that there
were angry whispers of ' tyranny ' and ' oppres-
sion,' and murmurs of ' an attack on liberty.'
Beaumarchais, stung to the quick, swore that it
should be played, ay, even if it was in the choir of
Notre-Dame ! The pressure on Louis was great ;
the Court was in want of a new sensation, and to
be made to laugh at its own follies was a very
new one indeed.

In three months, the Comte de Vaudreuil, the
leader of Marie Antoinette's societe intime of the
Little Trianon, obtained the royal permission to
have it acted in his house at Gennevilliers, by the
company from the Comedie, before the Comte
d'Artois and the Queen's bosom friend, the
Duchesse de Polignac. The Queen herself in-
tended to have been present, but was prevented
by an indisposition. When the permission was
accorded, Beaumarchais was in England. He
hurried home, saw to the performance himself,
and made his own conditions.

On September 26, 1783, three hundred per-
sons, the very flower of Court society, crowded
into Vaudreuil's theatre, and would have died of

254 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

suffocation if the resourceful Beaumarchais had
not broken the panes of the windows with his
cane. It was said he had made a hit in two
senses. The aristocratic audience received his
play with rapturous applause. He adroitly followed
up his success by presenting his piece to a tribunal
of censors who, for some unknown reason, 'felt
sure it would be a failure,' and expressed them-
selves satisfied with it after they had made a few
insignificant omissions. Finally, a reluctant per-
mission was wrung from the King, and on April 27,
1784, seven months after the performance at
GenneviUiers, ' The Marriage of Figaro ' was first
publicly performed at the new Comedie Fran9aise,
built on the site of the Hotel de Conde, and now
known as the Odeon.

The play was to begin at half-past five in the
afternoon, but from early in the morning the doors
were besieged by crowds, in which cordons Mens
elbowed Savoyards, and the classes and the masses
began their long struggle. In the press three
persons were suffocated — 'one more than for
Scudery,' said caustic La Harpe. Great ladies sat
all day in the dressing rooms of the actresses to
be sure of securing seats, and duchesses were
delighted to obtain a footstool in the gallery, a
part of the house to which, as a rule, ladies never
went. The theatre was Ht by a new method.

BEAUMAECHAIS : THE PLAYWEIGHT 255

The famous Dazincourt played Figaro ; and Mol^,
Almaviva. The author himself was in a private
box between two abbes who had promised to ad-
minister ' very spiritual succour ' in case of death.
Then the curtain rose.

' The " Marriage of Figaro," ' said Napoleon,
' was the Eevolution already in action.'

As in the ' Barber of Seville,' the atmosphere and
the clothes are Spanish, the spirit and essence wholly
French. The story of Figaro, the servant who
outwits his lord and wins Suzanne, whom his master
has tried to steal from him, forms a plot simple
enough. Count Almaviva, the master, is certainly
one of the best representations of the great noble of
the old regime ever put on the stage. Continually
worsted in argument by his valet, and perpetually
in the most ridiculous situations, he never loses
the dignity of good breeding — as Beaumarchais
himself puts it, ' the corruption of his heart takes
nothing from the hon ton of his manners.' Figaro
is, of course, democracy with its wits awake at
last, and stung to courage and action by centuries
of wrongs. The Countess (the Eosina of the
' Barber ') and Suzanne are the most charming and
seductive reproductions of the eighteenth-century
woman — ' spirituelles et rieuses,' coquettish, grace-
ful and gay. The chief fault of the play is the
episode of Marceline, in which the playgoer wearily

256 THE FKIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

recognises two, too familiar friends — the long-lost
mother and the mislaid baby with the usual
convenient birth-mark on the right arm.

The morals of the piece are throughout the
morals of the time — indelicacy, delicately ex-
pressed. Figaro hardly ever says anything in-
convenant, but intrigue is in the very air he
breathes. ' The ripening fruit,' writes Saint- Amand,
' hanging on the tree, never falls but seems always
on the point of falling.' Virtue, of a kind, does
triumph in the long run, but Beaumarchais knew
his audience so well that up to the last moment
he kept them fearing, or hoping, that it would not.
If its unpleasant situations, and the character of
the precocious page Cherubino (a particularly
distasteful one to English ideas), gave spice to the
wit in its own day, the modern reader can enjoy
the sparkhng and rippling stream of mocking
gaiety without stirring up the mud it hides. One
situation leads to another with the most complete
naturalness, and yet that other is always perfectly
unexpected. Moralisings and soliloquies, which
spell ruin in other plays, are in this one rich in
briUiancy and aptness. Those who as yet know
'The Marriage of Figaro' only by name, can
purchase for a few pence one of the most ex-
hilarating draughts of intellectual champagne ever
given to the world.

BEAUMAEOHAIS : THE PLAYWEIGHT 257

But it is not only as literature that the play-
lives. It was the Eevolution already in action.
There are hardly six consecutive lines which do
not contain some indictment against the old order ;
there is not an aphorism which does not push,
with a laugh, some abuse down the abyss. ' There
is one thing more amazing than my play,' said
Beaumarchais, ' and that is its success.' He was
right. One can but marvel still that the old order,
so clearly hearing its sentence of death, took that
sentence only as a stupendous joke, ' laughed its
last laugh' over 'Figaro,' and applauded the war-
rant for its own execution till its hands tingled
again.

The fine ladies heard their vapours defined as
' the malady that prevails only in boudoirs ; ' and
my lord, surrounded by sycophants, saw himself
for a mocking second as other men see him, when
Figaro says to Bazile : 'Are you a Prince to be
flattered? Hear the truth, wretch, since you
have not the money to pay a liar.'

With what a roar of laughter that tribunal
of censors who had licensed the play heard the
words : ' Provided I do not mention in my writ-
ings, authority, religion, poHtics, morahty, officials
... or anyone who has a claim to anything, I
can print everything freely under the inspection
of two or three censors ; ' and with what amused

S

258 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

self-complacency it listened to the axiom : ' Only
little minds fear little writings.'

The hereditary noble hstened to this : ' Nobility,
money, rank, place, all that makes people so
proud ! What have you done for so much good
fortune? You have given yourself the trouble
to be born ; ' and the bourgeois at his side, to
whom merit had opened no path to glory, heard
with a strange thrill Figaro continue, ' While for
me, lost in a crowd of nobodies, I have had need
of more knowledge and calculation simply to exist,
than has been employed to govern all the Spains
for a hundred years.'

Did the Minister who had filled the snug
posts in the Government with his own relations
and friends see nothing but a joke in : ' They
thought of me for a situation, but unluckily I was
fit for it ; they wanted an accountant ; a dancer
obtained the place'? 'Intelligence a help to
advancement ? Your lordship is laughing at mine.
Be commonplace and cringing, and you can get
anywhere.' ' To succeed in life, le savoir-faire vaut
mieux que le savoir'

The ubiquitous Englishman of the audience
heard Figaro announce ' Goddam ' to be ' the basis
of the Enghsh language.' The political world
listened to a scathing definition of diplomacy:
' To pretend to be ignorant of what everyone else

BEAUMAECHAIS : THE PLAYWRIGHT 259

knows, and to know what everyone else does not

know ... to seem deep when one is only empty

and hollow ... to set spies and pension traitors

... to break seals and intercept letters . . .

there's diplomacy, or I'm a dead man.'

The audience trooped out into the night — the

performance lasted from half-past five till ten —

with enthusiastic admiration on its lips and still

ringing in its ears the seventh couplet of the

vaudeville :

Par le sort de la naissance,
L'un est roi, Tautre est berger ;
Le hasard fit leur distance ;
L'esprit seul peut tout changer.

The writer, certainly, had as little idea as his
audience that his was to be the wit to change
everything. From first to last, Beaumarchais was
the man we have always with us, who means to
advance in the world and let that world take care
of itself; whose argument is that posterity having
done nothing for him, he need do nothing for
posterity; the true time-server, just audacious
enough to say what less courageous people only
dare to think, and earning thereby their gratitude
and applause. Caron had reaped place and fortune
from the old order, and was not at all minded to
overthrow it. Tyranny for tyranny, he preferred
the despotism of the King to the despotism of the
mob. If he revenged himself in his play for the

s 2

260 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

slights and humiliations from which even his
cleverness had not been able to save him — that was
absolutely all. Overturn Throne and Church!
Such a houleversement would very likely overturn
Caron de Beaumarchais too, and was not to be
thought of.

Yet it was this man who gave light popular
expression to the principles to which Voltaire
and his friends devoted their lives, their ardour,
and their genius. It was surely a cruelty of fate
that the Master could not live to see 'Figaro.'
Its author might miss its significance, but Voltaire
— never.

Beaumarchais, indeed, had merely caught the
accent of his age, as a child catches the accent of
its nurse, and ' wrote revolutionary literature, as
M. Jourdain spoke prose, without knowing it.' In
'The Marriage of Figaro' he said what all men
were feeling, but not what he felt. He wished to
be a successful playwright, and he was one ; but
he did not mean to be one of the greatest and
most inflijlential of Eevolutionists — and he was
that too.

Hefo
of Figarc
charity.
Maternal

owed up the success of ' The Marriage
' by generously founding a fashionable
o be known later as the Benevolent
Institution, and the King followed up

the succps he had always disHked by punishing

1

BEAUMAECHAIS : THE PLAYWEIGHT 261

an imprudent letter Caron had written in a news-
paper, and which had offended Monsieur, by
writing on a playing card, as he sat at his game,
an order for Beaumarchais' imprisonment.

By one of those charming little surprises for
which the old regime was so celebrated, Beau-
marchais, of fifty-three, found himself locked up in
St. Lazare, then a house of correction for juvenile
offenders. At first Paris went into roars of
laughter, and then she became very angry indeed.
In a few days she obtained the release of her
playwright ; and Louis, with the inconceivable in-
consistency that distinguished his career, not only
gave him enormous monetary compensation, but
permitted as a further reparation, ' The Barber of
Seville ' to be played at the Little Trianon.

That representation marked the crowning
point of Beaumarchais' success. Dazincourt
trained the company of royal and noble amateurs.
Marie Antoinette was rehearsing the part of
Eosina with Madame de Campan when she first
heard of the opening of a grimmer drama, the
scandal of the Diamond Necklace. On August 15,
1785, Cardinal de Kohan was arrested. On the
19th, 'The Barber of Seville' was played in
the theatre of the Little Trianon, with lucky
Beaumarchais in the audience, the Queen as
Eosina, the Comte de Vaudreuil as Almaviva, the

262 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

Due de Guiche as Bartholo, and the Comte d'Artois
as Figaro.

The Queen was infinitely vivacious in her part.
Did Bazile's terrible definition of Calumny dis-
concert her ?

' At first a mere breath, skimming the ground
like a swallow, but sowing poison as it flies . . .
it takes root, creeps up, makes its way, goes . . .
from mouth to mouth : then, all of a sudden, one
knows not how. Calumny is standing upright,
rearing its head, hissing, swelling, growing visibly.
It spreads its wings, takes flight, eddies round
. . . bursts, thunders, crashes, and becomes,
thanks to heaven, a general outcry, a public
crescendo, a universal chorus of hatred and
proscription. What devil could resist it ? '

If Queen or audience found in the words too
awful an application and prophecy, history does
not relate.

How strange, with the knowledge of after
events, sound in the mouth of d'Artois the words :
'I am happy to be forgotten, being sure that a
great man does enough good when he does no
harm. As to the virtues one requires in a
servant, does your Excellency know many masters
who are worthy of being valets?' and, most
strange of all, ' I hasten to laugh at everything,
lest I should have to weep at everything,'

BEAUMAECHAIS : THE PLAYWRIGHT 263

The performance of the ' Barber ' at Trianon
was the last flicker of the dying fire of royal
pleasure. Beaumarchais' own light began to fail.
He was shortly involved in a famous dispute with
Mirabeau about the Paris Water Company, in
which that great genius brought out his mighty
guns of irony and invective and in one fierce blast
blew, as it were, Beaumarchais' nimble-witted
head from his shoulders. ' Figaro ' has dubbed
my diatribes ' Mirabelles,' has he ? Well, he shall
pun at my expense no more. AU Paris stood
watching. Dazzling, burning, and terrible, Mira-
beau's sun was rising above the horizon, and
Beaumarchais' star was fading in the stormy sky.
Then he had another lawsuit, in which he entered
the lists as the champion of wronged beauty.
His opponent was Bergasse, the young lawyer,
who ' had his reputation to make ' at some one's
expense, and made it at Beaumarchais'.

In 1786, Caron married Mademoiselle Willer-
maula, who had long been his mistress, and by
whom he had a daughter, Eugenie. For them, he
built a splendid house looking on to the Bastille,
near the Porte Saint-Antoine, which became one
of the sights of Paris.

In 1787, he produced a very feeble opera,
'Tarare,' which had a small temporary success.

On July 14, 1789, the Bastille fell. Not

264 THE FBIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

only the fine house was in danger, but its fine
owner as well. He had written 'Figaro'? Yes.
But he had been the courtier and the secret agent
of kings. His pluck and energy did not in the
least desert him. In the midst of the uproar he
was writing a new play, ' The Guilty Mother.'

La Harpe (no wonder his friends called him
La Harpie) declared it was ' downright silly ; '
and perhaps this thorough-going verdict is but
little too severe. ' The Guilty Mother ' forms a
sort of third volume to the ' Barber ' and ' Figaro,'
and falls as fiat as most sequels. The same cha-
racters appear, grown old. The Guilty Mother
is the Eosina of the ' Barber ' and the Countess
Almaviva of ' Figaro ; ' while Cherubino has
grown up into the very objectionable young man
such a boy would grow into. Beaumarchais had
built a theatre — the Theatre du Marais — near
his house, in which he proposed his new piece
should appear.

On June 6, 1792, the day before it was to be
produced, its author was denounced before the
National Assembly by Chabot. He had indeed,
with a view to making at once a coup for his
country and for himself, and though he was now
sixty years old and getting deaf, undertaken to
bring into France sixty thousand guns — ' to mas-
sacre patriots,' shouted unreasonable patriotism.

BEAUMAECHAIS : THE PLAYWRIGHT 265

On August 10 his house was searched; on
August 23 he was taken to the Abbaye prison,
and on August 30 he was freed by Manuel (his
brother litterateur, as well as Procurator of the
Commune), just two days before the September
massacres. After all, his star had not yet declined.

After hiding in barns and roaming 'over
harrowed fields, panting for his life,' he escaped
to England, where very luckily for himself a
London merchant, to whom he was in debt, pre-
vented his returning to Paris and the guillotine
by shutting him up in the King's Bench Prison.
In March, 1793, he did return, ' to offer my head
to the sword of justice, if I cannot prove I am
a good citizen.' That he did not thus pay for
his imprudence proves that there was as much in
that head as had ever come out of it.

Three months later, Beaumarchais was sent as
the emissary of the Eevolutionary Government to
fetch those sixty thousand guns which had been
left in Holland. He had many highly dramatic
escapes and adventures ; and, being whoUy modern
in his belief in self-advertisement, he once more
made the most of them. In his absence the
Government which had sent him, by one of those
little mistakes which make its history so vivacious,
declared him an emigre!

During the Terror he was at Hamburg, in

266 THE FRIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

direst poverty and in mortal anxiety as to the fate
of his wife, his daughter, and his sister Julie.
They escaped with their lives ; but when Beau-
marchais was at last taken off the list of emigres
and returned to Paris in 1796, he found house and
fortune alike in ruins, his door besieged by
creditors, and his famous garden a wilderness.

He was sixty-four years old and had already
done more in his life than a hundred ordinary
men compress into a hundred ordinary careers.
And now he must start afresh !

He saw his daughter married ; revived his old
social tastes, produced ' The Guilty Mother,' and
took the keenest interest, both in prose and verse,
in that young Lieutenant of Artillery, Kapoleon
Bonaparte. He also published two very anti-
Christian letters in praise of Voltaire. The
watchmaker's son, who had charmed Mesdames
at Versailles, was to the end witty, gay, bold, and
practical.

On the morning of May 18, 1799, his friends
found him dead of apoplexy. To die in his bed
at last was surely not the least of his clevernesses.

Caron de Beaumarchais was not a very unusual
type of character or even of intellect ; but in the
use he made of his brains, of his qualities and of
his circumstances, he was a man in a million.
His marvellous enterprise and industry enabled

BBAUMAKCHAIS : THE PLAYWEIGHT 267

him to build more than one successful career
on very ordinary foundations. His luck, that
astonishing luck which followed him from the
cradle to the grave, seems to have prevented such
dangerous qualities as his conceit, his pugnacious-
ness, and his love of intrigue and speculation, from
bringing their usual fatal results. Such gifts as a
handsome face, a fine figure, a ' parvenu grandeur
of manner ' and real kindness and generosity, he
used to their utmost advantage. For himself and
his contemporaries he was a brilliantly successful
individuality.

For posterity, he is the man who, with a single
thrust, pushed open that door, which by long
labour and bitter sacrifice Voltaire and the En-
cyclopaedists had unbarred, upon the great
Eevolution and the Day.

THE FEIENDS OP VOLTAIEE

X

CONDORCET: THE ARISTOCRAT

Voltaire was the son of a lawyer, and Diderot the
son of a cutler ; d'Alembert was a no-man's child
educated in a tradesman's family ; Grimm and
Galiani were foreigners in the country to which
they gave their talents. Of all Voltaire's fellow-
ship only Vauvenargues and Condorcet came from
the order their work was pledged not to benefit but
to destroy. Condorcet alone lived to experience
the extreme consequences of his principles, and
paid for them by imprisonment and death. The
Aristocrat who lost his life through the People to
whom he had devoted it — this was Jean Antoine
Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet.

Born in 1743, at Eibemont, a town in Picardy,
Condorcet belonged to a noble family highly con-
nected both with the Church and the Army.

His father was a captain of cavalry and designed
his son for the same aristocratic post. But he
died when the child was four; and a devout
mother vowed him to the Virgin and au blanCy

JEAN-ANTOINE-NICOLAS DE CARITAT, MARQUIS DE CONDORCET.
From an Engraving by Lemort, after the Bust by St. Aubin.

>. OF

CONDOECET: THE ARISTOCRAT 269

dressed him in white frocks like a little girl, so
that the luckless Caritat could neither run nor
jump as nature bade him, and owed to his mother's
piety a weakness in his limbs from which he never
recovered.

His first schoolmasters were the Jesuits.
What is one to make of the fact that they had
as virgin soil the intellects of at least four of
their mightiest and fiercest opponents — Voltaire,
Diderot, Turgot, and Condorcet ?

At eleven, Caritat was under their supervision,
with his home influence pressing him to their way
of thought, with an uncle a bishop, and Cardinal
de Bernis a relative. At thirteen, he was sent to
Eheims, to be more completely under their control.
At fifteen, he came up to Paris, and began at the
College of Navarre to study mathematics and to
think for himself; and when once a mind has
begun to do that, nothing can stop it.

His treatment of a particularly difficult theme
brought him the acquaintance of d'Alembert, who
first saw in the boy, who was to be to him as a
son, a kindred genius, a future colleague at the
Academy. Caritat was only seventeen when he in-
troduced himself to his other great friend, Turgot,
writing him a ' Letter on Justice and Virtue '
which already proclaimed this college student a
thinker of a high order. An ' Essay on the Integral

270 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

Calculus,' which he presented at the Academy of
Sciences when he was twenty-two, attracted to him
the flattering notice of the famous mathematician,
Lagrange. There was in it not only the ardour
of youth and a buoyant fecundity of idea, but a
profundity of learning not at all youthful.

Caritat was now no longer a student, but still
lodging in Paris. In 1769, when he was twenty-
six, he entered the Academy of Sciences in
opposition to the wishes of all his relatives, who
never pardoned him, he said, for not becoming
a captain of cavalry.

The man who ought, by the solemn unwritten
laws of the family compact, to have been a heavy
dragoon, was soon acknowledged as one of the
finest original thinkers of his age, the friend of
d'Alembert and of Voltaire, and something yet
greater than a thinker — greater than any great
man's friend — a practical reformer and a generous
lover of human-kind.

The character of Condorcet — he who with
Turgot has been said to have been ' the highest
intellectual and moral personality of his century '
— has in it much not only infinitely good, but also
infinitely attractive. Perfectly simple and modest,
somewhat shy in the social world which he himself
defined as 'dissipation without pleasure, vanity
without motive, and idleness without rest,' among

CONDOECET: THE AEISTOCEAT 271

his intimates no one could have been more gay,
witty, and natural. Though his acquaintances
might find him cold, his friends knew well what a
tender and generous soul shone in the thoughtful
eyes. If he listened to a tale of sorrow coldly and
critically almost, while others were commiserating
the unfortunate, Condorcet was remedying the mis-
fortune. Though he never could profess affection,
he knew better than any man how to prove it ;
and if all his principles were stern, all his deeds
were gentle. So quiet in his tastes that he had
no use for riches, wholly without the arrogance
and the blindness which distinguished his class,
he had its every merit and not one of its faults ;
and he well deserved the title Voltaire gave him
— ' The man of the old chivalry and the old
virtue.'

In 1770, when he was twenty-seven, he went
with d'Alembert to stay at Ferney. Voltaire was
delighted with him. Here was a man after his
own heart, with his own hatred of oppression
and fanaticism and his own zeal for humanity,
with better chances of serving it ! The Patriarch
did not add, as he might have added, that
this young Condorcet had a thousand virtues
a Voltaire could never compass — that he was
pure in Hfe and hated a lie ; that he was wholly
without jealousy, without vanity, and without

272 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

meanness. Caritat soon worshipped at the feet of
a master of whom his friendship with d'Alembert
had already proclaimed him a pupil, while Voltaire
enlisted his guest's quiet, practical help for the
rehabilitation of the Chevalier de la Barre, for
the revision of the process of d'Etallonde; and
honoured him by becoming his editor and assist-
ant in the critical ' Commentary on Pascal ' which
Condorcet produced later.

Because his humility was the humility of a just
mind and his modesty of the kind that scorns to
cringe, Condorcet's admiration for his host did not
blind him to his literary faults or make him meanly
spare them ; and while it was Condorcet who
spoke in warm eulogy of his ' dear and illustrious
chief as working not for his glory but for his
cause, it was also Condorcet who deprecated that
production of Voltaire's senility, ' Irene.' Some-
times the three friends would talk over the future
of France — the two older men who had done
much to mould that future and the young man
who had much to do. ' You will see great days,'
old Voltaire wrote afterwards to his guest ; ' you
will make them.'

The visit lasted a fortnight, and was a liberal
education indeed.

Three years later, in 1773, Condorcet received
the crown of his success as a mathematician and

CONDOECBT: THE AEISTOCEAT 273

was made Perpetual Secretary of the Academy of
Sciences, where he wrote eloges of the savants
who had belonged to it, with the noble motto for
ever in his mind, 'One owes to the dead only
what is useful to the living — justice and truth.'

So far, Condorcet had been a mathematician
alone. Knowledge might free and redeem the world
— in time ; but the time was long. Beneath that
quiet exterior, palpitating through his leisurely,
exact studies at the College of Navarre and the
Scientific Academy, there throbbed in this man's
breast a vaster and fiercer passion than any passion
for learning — the passion for human-kind. Where
did young Condorcet come by that ruling idea of
his that opened to him a field of labour which he
must till all his days, unremittingly, before the
night Cometh when no man can work — that idea
which should steel him to endure, exulting, the
cruellest torments of life and death — ' the infinite
perfectibility of human nature, the infinite aug-
mentation of human happiness ' ?

The friend of d'Alembert was Condorcet, the
geometrician ; the friend of Turgot was Condorcet,
the reformer.

In August, 1774, Turgot was made Controller-
General. He appointed Condorcet his Inspector
of Coinage at a salary of 240Z. a year, a payment
which Condorcet never accepted.

T

274 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

Tlie pair had work to do, which only they
could do, and do together. The vexed subject
of Trade in Grain — ' for a moment,' says Eobinet,
' the whole question of the Eevolution lay in this
question of Grain ' — incited them to fierce battle
for what they took to be the cause of freedom
against the cause of that well-meaning common-
place, Necker. Condorcet attacked Necker with
a rare, fierce malignity, and wrote two sting-
ing pamphlets on the subject which made him
many enemies.

But there were other reforms waiting the
doing, less in importance then and greater in
importance now. To curtail the advantages of
the privileged classes, to open for commerce the
rivers of central France, to abolish the slave trade,
Taille and Corvee^ Vingtieme and Gabelle, and to
make the nobility share in the taxation — these
were the tasks into which this noble put his life
and his soul. That every reform meant loss to
himself, that all his interests were vested in the
privileges he sought to destroy, that every human
tie drew him towards the old order, makes his
work for the new, more excellent than that of
his fellow-workers. They had nothing to gain ;
Condorcet had everything to lose.

In May, 1776, a Queen of one-and-twenty
demanded that ' le sieur Turgot fiit chass^, m^me

CONDORCET: THE ARISTOCRAT 275

envoye k la Bastille ' ; and, in part, she had her
way, for her own ruin and that of France. Con-
dorcet renounced his Inspectorship of Coinage ; he
would not serve ■ under another master. Turgot's
death in 1781 was the first great sorrow of his
life. His other friend, d'Alembert, won for him a
seat in the French Academy in 1782 ; and in the
next year he too died. Condorcet tended him to
the last, with that quiet and generous devotion
which says little and does much. D'Alembert
left to him the task of providing annuities for two
old servants, and Condorcet accepted the obhgation
as a privilege, and fulfilled it scrupulously in his
own poverty and ruin.

He was now not a little lonely. His relatives
still resented his choice of a profession ; his best
friends were dead ; the great Master of their party
had preceded them. From ' social duties falsely
so called ' Caritat had long ago freed himself. He
was three and forty years old, occupied in writing
that ' Life of Turgot ' which is a declaration of his
own principles and policy, in contributing to the
Encyclopasdia, and in many public labours, when
he first met Mademoiselle Sophie de Grouchy.

If the supreme blessing of life be a happy
marriage, then Condorcet was a fortunate man
indeed. Mademoiselle was full twenty years
younger than himself, very girfish in face and

T 2

276 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

figure, with a bright cultivated mind, and a rare
capacity for love and tenderness. He found in her
what is uncommon even in happy marriages per-
haps — his wife was also his friend. From the first
she shared his work and his love for his fellow-men,
approved of his sacrifices, and was true not only
to him, but to his example of unselfish courage
and unflinching devotion, to the end of her life.

For the moment — for what a brief moment !
^— their world looked smiling enough.

Condorcet abandoned himself to his happiness,
with the deep passion of a strong man who has
never wasted his heart in lighter feelings. For
a dowry — so essential to a French marriage — he
wholly forgot to stipulate. For the opinion of his
friends, who considered a married geometrician as
a sort of freak of Nature, he cared nothing ; and
when they saw his wife, and forgave him, their
pardon was as little to him as their blame.

The two settled on the Quai de Conti in a
house where Caritat had previously lived with his
mother. At that Hotel des Monnaies Sophie held
her salon {le foyer de la Republique, men called it),
where she received, with a youthful charm and
grace, not only her husband's French political
friends, but also Lord Stormont the English
Ambassador, Wilkes, Garrick, Sterne, Hume,
Eobertson, Gibbon, Mackintosh, and Adam Smith.

CONDOEGET: THE AEISTOCEAT 277

Large and shy, with a little awkwardness even
in his manner, it was not Condorcet but his wife
who was socially successful. She was the one
woman in a thousand who estimated social success
at its low, just value, and was great in knowing
her husband to be much greater.

Only two years after their marriage, in 1788,
Condorcet entered the arena as one of the earliest
and most noteworthy of all champions of Women's
Eights. On the ground of their equal intelligence
he claimed for them equal privileges with men, and
ignored the very suggestion that their bodily weak-
ness and inferiority are reproduced in their minds.
He judged, in fact, all women from one woman.
No nobler testimony can be borne to the intellect
and character of the Marquise de Condorcet than
to say that she deserved as an individual what her
example made her husband think of her sex.

It is not a little curious to note that Condorcet,
though so wholly faithful and happy himself in
the relationship, thought the indissolubility of
marriage an evil. In later years, he pleaded
warmly for the condemnation of mercenary
marriages by public opinion, as one of the best
means of lessening the inequalities of wealth.

In 1790, the profound happiness of his wedded
life was crowned by the birth of his only child,
a daughter. Before that, the fierce whirlpool of

278 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

politics had drawn him into it, and he had
addressed the electors of the States-General and
appeared publicly as the enemy of sacerdotahsm
and aristocracy, with all his gospel based on two
great principles — the natural rights of man and
the mutable nature of the constitutions which
govern him. He was made member of the muni-
cipality of Paris, and in that, his first public
function, flung the gauntlet before his caste and
broke for ever with an order of which the smug
selfishness was admirably typified by a Farmer-
General who said to him, 'Why alter things?
We are very comfortable.'

The fall of the Bastille, the insurrection of
October, the journey of the Eoyal Family to Paris,
he had watched with the calm of one who knows
that such things must needs be, who realises the
necessity of painful means to a glorious end. To
the monarchy he was not at first opposed. If the
King were but a man ! But when in June, 1791,
came the ignominious flight to Varennes, Con-
dorcet rose in a fierce, still wrath and proclaimed
the necessity for a EepubHc. ' The King has freed
himself from us, we are freed from him,' said he.
' This flight enfranchises us from all our obligations.'

Nearly all the Marquis's friends broke with him,
and he stood alone. Before his ripened views on
royalty were fully known, it had been proposed

CONDOECET: THE ARISTOCEAT 279

that he should be the tutor of the Dauphin, and to
Sophie that she should be the gouvernante. Hus-
band and wife were in different places when the
proposals were made ; but, though they had never
spoken with each other on the subject, they
declined the offers almost in the same words. If
Condorcet's friends misunderstood him and parted
at the parting of the ways, his wife never did.

In 1791, he was elected member for Paris in
the Legislative Assembly and became in quick
succession its Secretary and its President. As
its President, he presented to it his Educational
Scheme, startlingly modern in its demands that
education should be free and unsectarian.

By the. order of the Assembly, in 1792, there
was burnt in Paris an immense number of the
brevets and patents of nobility — among them the
patent of Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis
de Condorcet — at the very moment when at the
bar of the tribune Condorcet himself demanded
that the same measure should be adopted all over
France. Not one dissentient voice was raised
against the scheme; who, indeed, should dissent
from it when a marquis proposed it ? A few
months later he was elected Member of the
National Convention for the Department of Aisne,
and the extremist of the Legislative Assembly
found himself all too moderate for the Convention.

280 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIBE

Then came the trial of the King.

There was never a time when Condorcet could
be called either an orator or a leader of men.
Though he had written most of its official addresses,
he had appeared but little before the Legislative
Assembly. Nervousness caused him always to
read any speeches he did make, and a delicate
voice robbed them of their effectiveness. His
deeds and his character earned him a hearing and
applause ; and sometimes his complete self-devotion
and the white heat of his enthusiasm discounted
his manner and touched his hearers with some-
thing of his own deathless passion. But he was,
as d'Alembert said, a volcano covered with snow,
and that audience of his, coarse in fibre, mad for
excitement, overwrought, uncontrolled, must needs
see the mountain in flames, vomiting lava and
death.

To be a great orator one must have in a
supreme degree the qualities one's hearers have in
a lesser degree. The thoughtful reason and the
lofty ideals of Condorcet found little counterpart
in the parliaments of the Eevolution. A Marat
or a Danton for us ! Or a Fouquier-Tinville even,
drunk with blood, with his wild hair flung back,
and his words shaking with passion ; but not this
noble, with the high courage of his caste, his
' stoical Eoman face,' his stern truthfulness, his

CONDOECET: THE AEISTOCEAT 281

unworldly enthusiasms. Worse than all, Con-
dorcet never was for a cause, but always for a
principle ; and since he followed no party blindly,
he was in turn abused by all.

He proved in his own history that to be a great
demagogue it is essential to be without too fine a
scrupulousness and the more delicate virtues ; that
successfully to lead the vulgar the first requisite is
not to be too much of a gentleman.

Condorcet, although he had broken with
monarchy as a possible form of government for
France, had still no personal feeling against the
monarch. Firmly convinced of his culpability, he
was equally convinced that the Convention was
not legally competent to judge its King at all ;
and proposed that he should be tried by a tribunal
chosen by the electors of the Departments of
France. But to take the judging of its sovereign
from the Convention was to take the prey whose
blood he has tasted from the tiger. When the
great moment came, Condorcet was at Auteuil ;
he hastened to Paris, and arrived at the Assembly
a few moments before the King.

What a strange contrast was this Marquis —
serene in strong purpose, with his 'just mind justly
fixed,' great in his compassion for his country and
not without compassion for his King — to that poor
Bourbon, ' who means well had he any fixed

282 THE FRIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

meaning/ and whom Condorcet himself described
in an admirable but rarely quoted description as
standing before his judges, ' uneasy, rather than
frightened ; courageous, but without dignity.'

On January 15, 1793, to the momentous
question if the prisoner at the bar were guilty,
Condorcet answered. ' Yes : ' he had conspired
against liberty. On the 17th and 18th the vote
was taken on the nature of the punishment to be
awarded. Consider the judgment-hall filled with
the fierce faces and wild natures of men who, for
centuries starved of their liberties, had drunk the
first maddening draught of power. Consider that
among them this noble alone represented a class
they hated worse than they hated royalty itself,
that if he had forsworn it, broken with it, denied
it, he had still its high bearing, its maddening self-
possession and self-control. We vote for death —
shall you dare to know better ? An Orleans sitteth
and speaketh against his own kin ; why not a
noble, then, who owes him nothing ? Condorcet
rises in his place and pronounces for exile — the
severest penalty in the penal code which is not
death. ' The punishment of death is against my
principles, and I shall not vote for it. I propose
further that the decision of the Convention shall
be ratified by an appeal to the people.'

On Saturday, January 19, 1793, the execution

GONDOECET: THE AEISTOCRAT 283

of the King having been fixed for the Monday,
Condorcet implored his colleagues to neutralise
the fatal eiSect of their decision on the other
European Powers by abolishing the punishment of
death altogether. With the Terror then struggling
to the birth in her wild breast, one of the greatest
children of his country begged for the suppression
of that penalty as the most ' eflScacious way of per-
fecting human-kind in destroying that leaning to
ferocity which has long dishonoured it. Punish-
ments which admit of correction and repentance
are the only ones fit for regenerated humanity.'

In the roar of that fierce storm of human
passions, the quiet voice was unheeded, but not
unheard. There were those who looked up at the
speaker, and remembered his words — for his ruin.

How far, up to this point, Condorcet realised
his danger is hard to say. A Louis, with the fatal
blindness of kingship, might believe to the last
that his person really was inviolable, that from
the tumbril itself loyal hands would deliver his
majesty from the insult of a malefactor's death.
But a Condorcet ?

The immediate result of his part in the King's
trial was that his name was struck from the roll of
the Academies of St. Petersburg and Berlin. That
insult touched him so little that there is not a
single allusion to it in his writings.

284 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

In the month succeeding the King's death, a
Commission of nine members of the Convention,
of whom Condorcet was one, laid before it their
project for the New Constitution of the Year II.,
to which Condorcet had written an elaborate Pre-
face. The project was not taken. Herault de
S^chelles made a new one. In his bold and scath-
ing criticism upon it — his ' Appeal to the French
Citizens on the Project of the New Constitution ' —
Condorcet signed his own condemnation.

On July 8, 1793, Chabot denounced that ' Appeal '
at the Convention. This ex-Marquis, he said, is
' a coward, a scoundrel, and an Academician.' ' He
pretends that his Constitution is better than yours ;
that primary assemblies ought to be accepted;
therefore I propose that he ought to be arrested
and brought to the bar.' On the strength of this
logical reasoning and without evidence of any
kind against him, the Convention decreed that
Condorcet's papers should be sealed and that he
should be put under arrest and on the list of those
who were to be tried before the Eevolutionary
Tribunal on the coming third of October. He
was further condemned in his absence and declared
to be liors la loi.

If it is doubtful whether Condorcet realised
the probable effect of his opinion and vote in the
matter of the King's trial, he had reahsed to the

CONDOECET: THE AEISTOCRAT 285

full the jeopardy in which the ' Appeal ' would
place him. But he looked now, as he had looked
always, not to the effect his deeds might have on
his own destiny, but to their effect on the destiny
of the race. If the unit could but do his part for
the mass, then, having done it, he must be content
to be trampled under its feet, happy, if on his
dead body some might rise and catch a glimpse
of a Promised Land.

But yet he must save himself if he could.

For seven years, through storms of which the
story still shakes men's souls, he had known in his
own home, first on the Quai de Conti and then in
the Eue de Lille, the deep, calm joys of his happy
marriage. When the troubles of life come only
from without, through the fiercest of such troubles
man and wife may be happy still. It is those evils
alone which rise from their own characters which
can wholly destroy the beauty of life. In the
serene tenderness of the woman who kept for ever,
it is said, some of the virgin freshness of the girl,
who united to strength gentleness, and to courage
quietness, who was at once modest and clever,
simple and intelligent, Condorcet was given a rich
share of the best earth has to offer.

Their salon, of course, was no more. The
beating of the pitiless storm had driven their
Englishmen to covert in happier England. But

286 THE FEIBNDS OF VOLTAIEE

it is only when one is discontented with one's rela-
tives that there is crying need of acquaintances.
These two still had each other and their child.
Condorcet had much to lose.

To go to the Eue de Lille would be courting
death. He escaped first to his country home at
Auteuil. From there, two friendly doctors took
him to a house in the Eue Servandoni, belonging
to Madame Yernet, the widow of the sculptor, and
asked her to shelter a proscribed man. She only
inquired if he was good and virtuous. When
they answered, 'Yes,' she consented at once. 'Do
not lose a moment, you can tell me about him
later.' Eegarding the value of the works of her
husband there have been many opinions, but as to
the value of her work there can be only one.
Perfectly aware that she was endangering her
life for a fugitive whom she had never seen,
and who had not the slightest claim upon her
generosity, she sheltered him for nine months,
providing him all the time with every necessary of
life and without the smallest hope of repayment.
When he did leave her at last, he had to steal
away from her self-sacrificing care by a subter-
fuge, like a thief. Strong, simple and energetic,
high in courage and devotion, Madame Yernet is
one of the unsung heroines of history.

Condorcet's condition was destitute indeed

CONDOECET: THE AEISTOCBAT 287

As an outkw all his money had been seized. For
himself that might have been bearable ; even to
the fate he foresaw too clearly he could be in-
different — for himself. One Sarret, to whom
Madame Vernet was privately married and who
lived in the house, speaks of the fugitive's gentle-
ness, patience, and resignation. He had given to
his country his talents, his time, his fortune, his
rank ; and when she turned and rent him, he had
for her nothing but compassion and the strong
hope of a day that would dawn upon her clear
and fair, after the storm was past.

But in the knowledge that he had brought
ruin and disgrace on what he loved best in the
world, Condorcet sounded one of the great deeps
of human suffering. As the wife of an outlaw,
Madame de Condorcet was not only penniless,
but could not even sleep in the capital. Wholly
dependent on her was her little girl of three
years old, a young sister, and an old governess.
She was herself still young and brought up in
a class unused to work, in the sense of work to
make money, for generations. But there was
in her soul the great courage of a great love.
The talents which had once charmed her salon
she now turned to a means of livelihood. When
her house at Auteuil was invaded by Kepublican
soldiers, Madame softened their hearts and earned

288 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIKE

a pittance by taking their portraits. Twice
a week, disguised as a peasant, she came on
foot from Auteuil to Paris, passed through the
gates with the fierce crowds thronging to the
executions in the Place de la Eevolution, and by
painting miniatures of the condemned in the
prisons, of proscribed men lying hidden in strange
retreats, or of middle-class citizens, made enough
to support her little household. Then, sometimes,
she would creep to the Eue Servandoni, and for a
few minutes forget parting, death, and the terrors
of the unknown future, in her husband's arms. He
might well write, as he did write but a little while
before he died, that even then he was not all
unhappy — he had served his country and had had
her heart.

He spent the long days of his hiding almost
entirely in writing. He began by an exposition
of his principles and conduct during the Revolu-
tion, and gave an account of his whole public
career. He was writing it when, on October 3,
1793, he was tried, in his absence, before the
Eevolutionary Tribunal, with Vergniaud, Brissot,
and others, accused of conspiring against the
unity of the Eepublic, declared an emigrant, and
condemned to death.

On the 31st of the same month came the fall
of the Girondins. Though not himself a Girondin

CONDOECET: THE AEISTOCEAT 289

they had been once his friends, and in their ruin
he saw the immediate presage of his own ; and his
own meant that also of Madame Vernet. He went
to her at once. ' The law is clear ; if I am dis-
covered here you will die as I shall. I am hors la
hi ; I cannot remain here longer.' She answered
that though he might be hors la hi he was not
outside the law of humanity ; and bade him stay
where he was.

His wife, in her peasant's dress, came to him
then for one of those brief moments, stolen from
Heaven. She knew him well. That ' Justification '
of his conduct, his Apologia, that looking back on
deeds and sacrifices meant to bring the Golden
Age to men and which had brought, or so it
seemed, the hell of the Terror — this was no fit
work for him now. Look ahead! Look on to
that new country which your pure patriotism and
your self-devotion, — ay, and this Terror itself —
shall have helped to make — that warless world of
equal rights and ever widening knowledge, the
beautiful dream of a sinless and sorrowless earth,
which may yet be realised, in part.

On the manuscript of the ' Justification ' there
is written in her hand ' Left at my request to write
the History of the Progress of the Human Mind'

In the very shadow of death, Condorcet told
the story of men's advance toward life, of the

u

290 THE FRIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

evolution of their understanding from the earliest
times until now. Calm, just, and serene, with not
an intemperate line, not an angry thought, the
' Progress ' reads as if it had been written by some
tranquil philosopher who had seen his plan for
man's redemption adopted, and had received for his
labour honours, peace, and competence. Its fault,
indeed, is its too sanguine idealism. Condorcet,
like many enthusiasts, thought his own way of
salvation for man the only way ; he believed his
own magnificent dream to be the only possible
Utopia.

Beneath the guillotine and in social convul-
sions for which history has no parallel, he looked
through and past them, in that last great chapter,
in the exalted spirit of noble prophecy, to that
Golden Age which must surely come !

But 'The Progress of the Human Mind' is
something more than a splendid hope, more than
the greatest and most famous of its author's works. .
It bears highest testimony to the character of
him who in the supreme hour of his individual
life could thus forget himself, and in the midst
of personal ruin, foresee with exultant joy the
salvation of the race.

It remains for ever among the masterpieces
which men cannot afford to forget.

During his hiding Condorcet also wrote ' The

CONDOECET: THE AKISTOCEAT 291

Letter of Junius to William Pitt' in which he
expresses his aversion to Pitt, and an essay, never
printed, 'On the Physical Degradation of the
Eoyal Kaces.' He also planned a universal philo-
sophical language.

In December, 1793, he wrote ' The Letter of a
Polish Exile in Siberia to his Wife ' — a poem in
which another exile bade farewell to the woman
he loved.

The death-shadows were creeping closer now.

In March, 1794, he finished ' The Progress of
the Human Mind.' But before that he had
decided to leave Madame Vernet ; her danger
was too great. Early in January he had begun
writing his last wishes, the 'Advice of a Pro-
scribed Father to his Daughter.' The little girl
was the child of too deep a love not to be in-
finitely dear. To what was he leaving her?
Throughout these cruel months, the last drop in
his cup of bitterness had been the strong con-
viction that his wife would share his own fate,
was doomed, like himself, to the guillotine. ' If
my daughter is destined to lose everything,' — even
to himself he could not frame the dread thought
in plainer words. But if even that thing must be,
then he left Madame Vernet the guardian of his
child, begging that she might have a liberal
education which would help her to earn her own

u 2

292 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

livelihood, and, in particular, that she might learn
English, so that if need came she could seek the
help of her mother's English friends.

To the little girl herself he left words of calm
and beautiful counsel, which are in themselves a
possession. Some of that 'light that never was
on sea or land' lies surely on those tender and
gracious lines, something of the serene illumination
that shines from a dying face.

In the early morning of April 5, 1794, the
Marquis de Condorcet laid down his pen for the
last time.

At ten o'clock on that day he slipped out of
the house in the Eue Servandoni, unknown to
Madame Vernet, and in spite of the passionate
protests of Sarret, her husband, who followed him
out into the street, praying him to return. Con-
dorcet was in his usual disguise ; many months'
confinement indoors, and the old weakness in
his limbs, made walking a difficulty. He was
at the door almost of the fatal prisons of the
Carmes and the Luxembourg ; but no persuasions
could make him return. He had heard rumours
of a domiciliary visit to be made immediately to
Madame Vernet's house and, were he found there,
she must be ruined. Sarret implored in vain.
The fugitive reached the Maine barrier in safety
and turned in the direction of Fontenay-aux-Eoses.

CONDOECET: THE ARISTOCRAT 293

At every step his pain and difficulty in walking
increased. But at three o'clock in the afternoon
he safely reached the country house of his old
friends, the Suards.

Madame Suard may be remembered as the
very enthusiastic and vivacious little lady who once
visited Voltaire, who has left behind her enter-
taining ' Letters,' and who has recorded Voltaire's
warm love and admiration for her friend Condorcet.
'Our dear and good Condorcet,' Madame Suard
had called him. She and her husband (who was
a well-known journalist and wit) had been his
intimate friends in prosperity; how could he do
better than come to them in his need ?

It must in justice be said of the Suards that
the accounts of their conduct are confused. But
the generally accepted, as well as the most pro-
bable, story does not redound to their credit.
True, they had many excuses ; but there has never
been any act of treachery for which the treacherous
have not been able to adduce a plausible reason.

Condorcet asked for one night's lodging, and
M. Suard replied that such hospitality would be
quite as dangerous for Condorcet himself as for
them. Still, they could give him money, some
ointment for a chafed leg due to his long walk,
and a copy of Horace — to amuse his leisure !
Further, we will not lock our garden-gate to-night

294 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

so that in case of urgent need you can make use
of it ! With this, they sent him away.

Madame Vernet, searching for him in that
neighbourhood a little while after, declared that
she tried the garden-gate and found it rusty and
immovable. Her own door, in lawless Paris, was
open night and day that, if he should return
to her, she should not fail him. Whether he
attempted to make use of the Suards' timid
hospitality is not known. One would think of
Condorcet that he did not.

The day of April 6 he spent in sufferings and
privations which can only be guessed.

On April 7, a tall man, gaunt and famished,
with a wound in his leg, went into an inn of
Clamart and asked for an omelette. Mine host,
looking at him suspiciously, inquired how many
eggs he would have in his omelette. The Marquis,
with no kind of idea of the number of eggs a
working-man, or any man for that matter, expects
in his omelette, said a dozen. M. Crepinet, the
innkeeper, was a shrewd person as well as one
of the municipals of the Commune. A queer
workman this ! Your name ? Peter Simon, was
the answer. Papers ? I have none. Occupation ?
Well, on the spur of the moment, a carpenter.
His hands, whose only tool had been a pen, gave
him the lie. Crepinet, pleased with his own

CONDOECET: THE AEISTOCEAT 295

sharpness, had this strange carpenter arrested and
marched toward Bourg-la-Eeine.

How in these supreme moments Condorcet felt
and acted, is not on record. But in the great
crises men unconsciously produce that character
which they have formed in the trivial round of
daily life, and he who would be great at great
moments must be a great character by his own
fireside and in the dull routine of his ordinary
work. The strong, quiet Condorcet was surely
strong and quiet still — ' the victim of his foes,' as
he had said, ' but never their instrument or their
dupe.' On that weary way, a compassionate vine-
dresser took pity on his limping condition, and
lent him a horse.

On the morning of April 8, 1794, when the
jailor of the prison of Boufg-la-Eeine came to hand
over the new prisoner to the gendarmes who had
arrived to take him to Paris, the Marquis de
Condorcet was found dead in his cell. With a
powerful preparation of opium and stramonium
prepared by his friend Cabanis, the celebrated
physician, and which Condorcet had long carried
about with him in his ring, he had ' cheated the
guillotine.' It was remembered afterwards, that
when he left the Suards' house, he had turned
saying, ' If I have one night before me, I fear no
man ; but I will not be taken to Paris.'

296 THE FRIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

That he who gave his life to the people should
have defrauded them, as it were, of his death,
strikes the one discord in the clear harmony of
this true soul.

Better that a Condorcet, like many a lesser
man, should have mounted the guillotine as a king
mounts his throne, proud to die for the cause for
which he had lived, and hearing through the blas-
phemy and the execrations of the rabble below,
the far-off music of a free and happy people.

For many months the woman who loved him
had no news of his death. She hoped against
hope that he had escaped, and was in safety in
Switzerland. To support her little household she
took a fine-linen shop in the Kue St. Honore, and
in the entresol set up her little studio where she
continued her portrait-painting.

In January, 1794, for the good and safety of
their child, she had heroically petitioned the
municipality for a divorce from her husband, and
obtained it — six weeks after his death. When the
certain news of that death reached her, both her
health and her strong heart faltered. But Doctor
Cabanis, who afterwards married her young sister,
saved her — for further effort and longer work.

Full of courage and resignation she rose up
again, wrote a preface to 'The Progress of the
Human Mind,' educated her child, and when in 1795

OONDORCBT: THE ARISTOCRAT 297

some of her fortune was restored, immediately
began paying the pensions which d'Alembert had
asked Condorcet to give his old servants.

In later days she had a little salon in Paris,
saw her daughter happily married, and died in
1822. In every stupendous change which France
experienced between the fall of Eobespierre and
the death of Napoleon Bonaparte, she remained
faithful to the principles to which her husband
had devoted his genius and his life.

Through all, the Marquise de Condorcet had
been, and had counted herself, a happy woman.
Wrung with such sorrows as do not fall to the lot
of many of her sex, she had had a blessing which is
the portion of far fewer of them ; she had inspired
a great devotion, and had been worthy of it.

To Condorcet is meted now in some sort the
same judgment as was meted to him in life.

Since he never gave himself blindly to any
one faction, all factions have distrusted and
condemned him. To the Eoyalist he is a Eevolu-
tionist ; to the Eevolutionist he is an aristocrat.
The thinker cannot forgive him that his thought
led him to deeds and words ; the man of action
cannot forget that he was thinker and dreamer to
the end. While the Church can never pardon
his persistent hostility to theology, his vehement
opposition to Eoman Catholicism, as the religion

298 THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

' where a few rogues make many dupes,' the
unbeliever is impatient with his serene faith in
human kind, his unshattered trust in the good-
ness, not of God, but of man.

Far in advance of his time — in some respects
of our time too — in his views on the rights of men
and of women, on the education of children, and
in his steady abhorrence of all limitation of what
Voltaire called ' the noble liberty of thinking,' he
is still condemned for an unpractical idealism, and
for his passionate conviction that all errors are the
fruit of bad laws.

But he at least stands out clearly to any im-
partial observer as one of the very few whose
lofty disinterestedness came un scorched through
the fire of the Terror.

In private life, stern to duty and yet tenderer
than any woman in his quiet, deep affections, patient
and strong with the fine endurance of steel and
with the capacity (that capacity which is as rare
as genius) for the highest form of human love,
he showed a great character beside which even his
great intellect seems a small thing and a mean.

In the breadth and the generosity of his self-
sacrifice for the public good, he remains for ever
one of the noblest, not only of the Friends of
Voltaire, but of the sons of France.

INDEX

'Advance, The, of the Mind of
Man ' (Turgot), 208

♦ Advantages, The, of Christianity '

(Turgot), 208

' Advice of a Proscribed Father,
The ' (Condorcet), 291

Aine, Madame d', 54, 123, 131,
132, 136

Alembert, Jean Lerond d', 45, 47,
72, 124-5, 133, 136, 199, 213, 269,
271, 275 ; birth and parentage, 2-
4 ; at Madame Kousseau's, 4-6 ;
education, 6-8 ; mathematical
studies, 8-9 ; publishes ' Treatise
on Dynamics ' and • Theory of
Winds,' 10 ; death of his mother,
10; acquaintance with Diderot,
11 ; writes ' Preface ' to Encyclo-
psedia, 12-13 ; offered Presidency
of Berlin Academy, 13-14;
member of the French Academy,
14 ; visits Voltaire, 15 ; writes
• Geneva,' 15-16 ; retires from
EncyclopaBdia, 16-17 ; publishes
'Elements of Philosophy,' 17;
visits Berlin, 18 ; his attach-
ment to Mile, de Lespinasse,
18-23 ; their salon, 23-24 ; pub-
lishes * History of the Destruc-
tion of the Jesuits,' 25 ; second
visit to Voltaire, 25-26; made
Perpetual Secretary of Academy,
26 ; illness and death of Mile,
de Lespinasse, 27-28 ; his un-
happiness and death, 29-30 ;
his work and character, 30-31

* Appeal to the French Citizens '

(Condorcet), 284-5
Argental, Comte d', 113
Artois, Comte d', 253, 262

' Banise ' (Grimm), 152

♦Barber of Seville, The' (Beau-

marchais), 247-50, 261-2
Beaumarchais, Caron de, birth and
early life, 236-7 ; first marriage,
238 ; at Court, 238-40 ; visits
Spain, 240-1 ; produces ' Eu-
genie,' 241 ; second marriage,
241-2; the Goezman lawsuit
and 'Memoirs,' 243-6; acts as
secret agent, 246-7 ; produces
'Barber of Seville,' 247-50;
edits Voltaire's Works, 250 ;
various employments, 251 ; ad-
vertises ' Figaro,' 252 ; produces
it at Gennevilliers, 253-4 ; and
at the Com^die, 254-60; im-
prisoned in St. Lazare, 261 ; sees
' Barber of Seville ' at Trianon,
261-2 ; quarrels with Mirabeau,
263 ; third marriage, 263 ; his
part in the Revolution, 263-6;
produces ' Guilty Mother,' 266 ;
death and character, 266-7
Beaumarchais, Madame (Mme.

Francquet), 237-8
Beaumarchais, Madame (Mme.

L6v6que)» 241-2
Beaumarchais, Madame (Mile.

Willermaula), 263, 266
Beaumarchais, Mademoiselle Eu-
genie, 263, 266
Bergasse (lawyer), 263
Bernis, Cardinal de, 33, 269
Blache, Comte de la, 243, 244
' Blind, Letter on the ' (Diderot),

41,42
Brienne,Lom6nie de, 208, 209, 210
Bueil, Comtesse de, 172, 173, 174
Buffon, Comte de, 127, 200

300

THE FRIENDS OF VOLTAIRE

Cabanis, Doctor, 204, 295, 296

Catherine the Great, 18, 56-8, 158,
168-70, 171, 174

Charles Edward Stuart, Prince,
182-3

Chatelet, Madame du, 42, 180

Chaulnes, Due de, 243

Choiseul, Due de, 69, 70, 73, 83

' Christianity Unveiled ' (d'Hol-
bach), 140-1

Cic^, Abb6 de, 208, 209, 224

Clavijo, 240-1

' Clergy, The Mind of the '
(d'Holbach), 141

'Commentary on Horace' (Gali-
ani), 73, 94

' Commentary on Pascal ' (Con-
dorcet), 272

Condorcet, Mademoiselle de, 277,
291-2,296-7

Condorcet, Marquis de, 24, 25, 29,
30, 196, 199, 221-2 ; his position
and birth, 268 ; education, 269-
270 ; character, 270-1 ; visits
Voltaire, 271-2 ; made Secre-
tary of Academy of Sciences,
272-3 ; work with Turgot, 274 ;
member of French Academy,
275 ; marriage, 275 - 7 ; as
Women's Eights champion, 277 ;
as a politician, 278-9 ; at the
trial of Louis XVI., 280-3 ;
writes ' Appeal ' and is pro-
scribed, 284-6 ; in hiding, 286-
292 ; writes ♦ Progress of Human
Mind,' &c., 289-91 ; his wander-
ings, 292-5; arrest and death,
295 ; work and character, 297-8

Condorcet, Marquise de (Mile, de
Grouchy), 275-7, 285-6, 287-8,
289, 296-7

' Corn Trade, Dialogues on the '
(Galiani), 62, 68, 86-90, 226

'Corn Trade, Letters on the'
(Turgot), 226

' Counsels to a Young Man '
(Vauvenargues), 103, 111

Daubini£:re, Madame, 85, 93
Dazincourt (actor), 255, 261
Deffand, Madame du, 18-19, 195
Destouches, General, 3, 4, 6

* Destruction of the Jesuits, History

of the ' (d'Alembert), 25, 133
Diderot, Ang61ique. See Vandeul,

Mme. de
Diderot, Denis, 11, 17, 30, 88, 125,
128, 130, 131, 138, 143, 163, 165,
168, 170, 191-2, 199, 202 ; educa-
tion, 32-3; early life in Paris,
34-6 ; marriage, 37-8 ; episode
of Mme. Puisieux, 39 ; writes
' Essay on Merit and Virtue '
and ' Philosophical Thoughts,'
39 ; birth of his daughter, 40 ;
writes ' Letter on the Blind,'
41 ; prisoner in Vincennes, 42-3 ;
works at Encyclopasdia, 43-8 ;

j miscellaneous labours, 49-51 ;
episode of Mile. Volland, 51 ;

I visits salons, 52-3 ; visits Grand-

: val, 53-6 ; produces plays, 56 ;

i visits Catherine the Great, 56-8 ;

i sees Voltaire, 58-9 ; illness and

j death, 60-1 ; estimate of his

I work and character, 61
Diderot, Madame (Mile. Anne
Toinette Champion), 36-9, 40-1,
51, 60-1

* Dynamics, Treatise on ' (d'Alem-

bert), 10

I 'Elements of Philosophy'

(d'Alembert), 17, 72
Encyclopaedia, The, 11-13, 14,

15-17, 43-8, 56, 121, 133, 150,

^213
' Epinay, Correspondence with

Madame d' (Galiani), 68
Epinay (Madame d'), 52-3, 79-80,

93, 125, 163-7, 172
' Eugenie ' (Beaumarchais), 241
' Existence ' (Turgot), 133, 213

* Fame and Pleasure, Discourses

on ' (Vauvenargues), 103
'Father of the Family, The'

(Diderot). 56
Fel, Mademoiselle (opera dancer),

150-1, 166

* Figaro, The Marriage of ' (Beau-

marchais), 252-60
Franklin, Benjamin, 129-30, 204

INDEX

301

Frederick the Great, 10, 13-14,
17-18, 88, 144, 156, 158, 167-8,
202 ,
Fr6ron, Elie (journalist), 88
Frise, or Frisen, Comte de, 153,
155

tion, 172-3 ; last years and
death, 174-5 ; his mission, 175
Guilty Mother, The' (Beau-
marchais), 264, 26G

Galiani, Abbe, 125, 130, 135-6,
144, 148 ; his characteristics,
62-3 ; birth and education,
63-4 ; at the Academy of Naples,
64-5 ; literary work, 65 ; reli-
gion, 66 ; posts and pensions,
67-8 ; appointed Secretary in
Paris, 68-9 ; his reception there,
70-1 ; his popularity, 71-3 ; as
a conversationalist, 73-4 ; at the
salons, 74-80; his wit, 81-2;
his work, 82-3 ; visits London,
83-4 ; recalled to Naples, 84-6 ;
publishes 'Dialogues on Corn
Trade,' 86-7 ; its reception,
87-90; life at Naples, , 90-3 ;
friendship with Mnie. d'Epinay,
93 ; illness and death, 94-5 ;
his mission, 95
Galiani, Bernard, 63-4, 92
Galiani, Celestin, 63-4, 67
Garrick, David, 55, 56, 129
' Geneva ' (d'Alembert), 15-16,

47
Geoffrin, Madame, 52, 66, 74-5,

127-8
' Goezman Memoirs ' {Beaumar-

chais), 241, 243-6
' Good Sense ' (d'Holbach), 147
Graffigny, Madame de, 183-4,

211-12
Grimm, Melchior, 49, 52-3, 58,
71, 79, 88, 125, 130, 144-5 ; his
love affair with Mile. Fel,
150-1; birth and early life,
151-2; character, 152-4; life
in Paris, 154-5 ; his ' Literary
Correspondence,' 156-63 ; his
attachment to Mme. d'Epinay,
163-6; visits Geneva, 166-7;
and Frederick the Great, 167-8 ;
and England, 168; and i^e
Eussian Court, 168-70; corre-
sponds with Catherine the Great,
171 ; his conduct in the Revolu-

' Happiness ' (Helvetius), 180, 204

Helvetius, Claude Adrien, 91, 127,
212 ; his family and education,
176-8; life in Paris, 178-9;
visits Voltaire, 180; relations
with Montesquieu, 181 ; his
charities, 182 ; assists Prince
Charles Edward, 182-3; meets
and marries Mile, de Ligni-
ville, 183-5 ; his hfe and good
works at Vor6, 185-92; his
book 'On the Mind,' 192-4;
effects of its publication, 195-9 ;
his salofi in Paris, 199-200 ;
visits England, 201-2 ; and
Frederick the Great, 202 ; his
book ' On Man,' 202-3 ; declin-
ing years, 203 ; death, 204 ; his
work and position, 204-5

Helvetius, Madame (Mile, de
Ligniville), 183-92, 197, 199-
200, 203-4, 212

Holbach, Baron d', 53, 55, 56,
76-7, 155 ; his position in the
eighteenth century, 118 ; and
among Voltaire's friends, 119 ;
early life, 120-1 ; marriage, 121 ;
salon in the Kue Royale, 121-2 ;
life and society at Grandval,
122-138; visit to England,
138-9 ; opinion of the English,
139-40 ; publishes * Christianity
Unveiled,' 140-1; and 'The
System of Nature,' 141-4 ; its
reception, 144-5 ; its philo-
sophy, 145-6; publishes other
books, 147 ; his last years and
death, 148-9 ; his character in
contrast to his book, 149

Holbach, Madame d', 121, 123, 131,
136-7

Hope (Pke Hoop), 123-4, 130

Houdetot, Madame d', 125-6,
164-5

Hume, David, 55, 56, 83, 128, 182,
200, 201

302

THE FEIENDS OF VOLTAIEE

'Imaginary Socrates, The'

(Galiani), 92
• Instincts and Habitual Tastes of

Man, The ' (Galiani), 92
' Integral Calculus, Essay on '

(Condorcet), 269-70
' Introduction to the Knowledge of

the Human Mind' (Vauven-

argues), 111

'Junius, Letter of, to William
Pitt ' (Condorcet), 290-1

' Justice and Virtue, Letter on '
(Condorcet), 269

'Justification, The' (Condorcet),
288, 289

La Harpb, Jean FranQois de, 156,

264
Le Breton (publisher), 43, 48
Lespinasse, Mademoiselle de, 18-

24, 27-28
* Literary Correspondence, The '

(Grimm and Diderot), 49, 63,

79, 150, 156-63, 170
Louis XV., 16-17, 69, 70, 83, 237,

239, 242, 246
Louis XVI., 224, 225, 226, 227,

228-9, 231-2, 233, 252-3, 260-1,

278, 280-3
Louis XVIII., 231

Malesheebes, 195, 231-2

' Man, On ' (Helv6tius), 202-3, 204

Marie Antoinette, 225, 230-1, 232,

233, 245, 246, 253, 261-2, 274-5
Marmontel, Jean Francois, 112,

113, 127
Maurepas, Comte de, 224, 225,

226, 231
' Meditation on Faith ' (Vauven-

argues), 103, 109, 111
Meister (Grimm's helper), 163, 170
•Merit and Virtue, Essay on'

(Diderot), 39
' Mind, On the ' (Helvaius), 127,

193-9, 202-3, 204-5
Mirabeau, Gabriel Honors, Comte

de, 263
Mirabeau, Victor Eiquetti, Marquis

de, 97-8, 100-1

UoU (actor), 255
Molin, Doctor, 4, 11
• Money, Essay on ' (Galiani), 65, 67
Montesquieu, 181
Morellet, Abbe, 88-9, 125, 199-200,
208, 210

•Natural Son, The ' (Diderot), 56,

241
Necker (Jacques), 75-6, 227-8, 274
Necker (Madame), 52, 75-6

' Paper Money, Letter on ' (Tur-

got), 208
Paris-Duverney (financier), 240,

241, 243
' Philosophical Thoughts, The '

(Diderot), 39, 41
'Physical Degradation of the

Eoyal Races, Essay on the '

(Condorcet), 291
' PoUsh Exile, Letter of a ' (Con-
dorcet), 291
Pompadour, Madame de, 155, 178
Por6e, P^re, 177
'Portable Theology' (d'Holbach),

141
•Preface, The' (d'Alembert), 12,

13, 31, 45
•Priests Unmasked' (d'Holbach),

141
'Progress of the Human Mind,

History of the' (Condorcet),

289-90, 291, 296
' Prophet, The Little, of Boehmisch-

broda ' (Grimm), 155
Puisieux, Madame, 39-40, 43

' Eameau's Nephew ' (Diderot), 61
Baynal, Abbe, 127, 129, 151, 156,

157
• Reflections ' (Vauvenargues), 111
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 16, 43,

47, 126-7, 128, 133, 151, 154,

164-6, 196, 199
Rousseau, Madame, 5-6

Saint-Lambert, Marquis de, 72,
126, 164-5

INDEX

303

Sarret, 287, 292

Saxe-Gotha, Duchess of, 153, 156,
158, 167

* Seneca, Life of ' (Diderot), 53

* Social System, The' (d'Holbach),

147
Sterne, Laurence, 55, 56, 85, 128
Suard, J. B., 156, 293-4
Suard, Madame, 293-4

* System of Nature, The ' (d'Hol-

bach), 141-7, 149

* Taeabe ' (Beaumarchais), 263

Tencin, Madame de, 3-4, 6, 10-11,
178

Tercier (press censor), 194, 197

Terrai, Abb6, 225

' Theory of Winds, Treatise on the '
(d'Alembert), 10

Theriot, 156

Turgot, Anne Eobert Jacques, 89-
90, 125, 133, 136, 184, 195-6,
204, 273-4, 275 ; his character
and work, 206-7; birth and
education, 207-8; at the Sor-
bonne, 208-10; at Madame de
Graffigny's, 211-12 ; visits Vol-
taire, 213-14; as Intendant of
Limoges, 214-24 ; Minister
of Marine, 224-5; Controller-
General, 225-32 ; his dismissal,
232-3 ; last years and death,
233-4 ; position among Vol-
taire's friends, 235

' Turgot, Life of ' (Condorcet), 221-
222, 275

Universal Morality ' (d'Holbach),

Vandeul, Madame de (Ang61ique
Diderot),.40-1, 57, 59, 60

Vaudreuil, Comte de, 253, 261

Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers,
Marquis de, character of his
writing, 96; birth and educa-
tion, 97-8 ; as a soldier, 98-100 ;
campaign in Bohemia, 101-2 ;
invalided, 103-4 ; friendship
with Voltaire, 104-7 ; settles in
Paris, 107-8; his philosophy,
108-11; his book, 111-13;
friends in Paris, 113-14 ; illness
and death, 115-17

Vergniaud, Pierre, 221, 288

Vernet, Madame, 286, 287, 289,
291, 292, 294

VoUand, Mademoiselle, 51, 52, 54,
59

' VoUand, Letters to Mademoiselle '
(Diderot), 54, 61, 130, 138

Voltaire, Arouet de, 1, 17, 62, 96-7,
225-6, 233, 250, 260; visited
by d'Alembert, 15, 25-6 ; friend-
ship with Diderot, 41-2, 55, 58-9 ;
opinion of Galiani's ' Dialogues,'
87 ; friendship with Vauven-
argues, 104-7, 113-14 ; opinion
of Vauvenargues' ' Maxims,'
112-13 ; of d'Holbach's ' System
of Nature,' 144, 146; and of
Grimm's ' Little Prophet,' 155 ;
visited by Grimm and Mme.
d'Epinay, 166; friendship with
Helv^tius, 179-80; opinion of
his book 'On the Mind,' 196,
198-9 ; visited by Turgot, 213-
214, 234 ; opinion of Beaumar-
chais, 242 ; and of the * Goezman
Memoirs,' 245 ; visited by Con-
dorcet, 271-2

Walpole, Horace, 129, 135
* Wealth, Eeflections on the Refor-
mation and Distribution [ of '
(Turgot), 222
Wilkes, John, 55, 56, 129, 247

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